The Nations Championship will begin on 4 July with a six-Test Super Saturday that opens a new global calendar battle in Christchurch, Cardiff, Cordoba and three other venues across the day. New Zealand will host France at Christchurch’s newly opened One New Zealand Stadium in the first fixture, before Australia meet Ireland, South Africa face England, Fiji play Wales and Argentina take on Scotland.
The opening round has been set out with kick-off times of 08:10 BST, 11:10 BST, 14:10 BST, 16:40 BST and 20:10 BST, with all six matches spread across a single day for fans following from opposite sides of the world. The same fixture-packed format will return on 11 July and 18 July, giving the tournament three straight Saturdays of concentrated Test rugby.
That schedule gives the competition an immediate sense of occasion, and England’s meeting with South Africa carries the sharpest edge of the first round. The sides last played at Twickenham’s Allianz Stadium in November 2024, when South Africa won 29-20, and the rematch arrives with the same venue set to stage the finals weekend that will decide both the inaugural champions and the first hemisphere trophy winners.
The Nations Championship is a new biennial series created through collaboration between the Six Nations and Sanzaar, bringing together the northern and southern hemisphere’s biggest Test nations in a format designed to run alongside the sport’s existing calendar. Each Six Nations side will face South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Argentina, Japan and Fiji once, with fixtures split between July and November in an attempt to create a single narrative across the international game outside World Cup and British and Irish Lions years.
Fiji will stage its home fixtures in the northern hemisphere to ease logistics and maximise revenue, while the time differences will mean the action stretches over two days for supporters in New Zealand and Australia. ITV Sport has secured the UK broadcast rights, and tournament chief Tom Harrison said the fixture list and kick-off times were built to give fans access to a full sequence of major clashes without missing the action.
There is still a practical test behind the concept. The structure promises a cleaner story for Test rugby, but it also asks players and unions to absorb a crowded set of matches in a short period, with the showpiece rounds compressed into three Saturdays in July before the competition resumes later in the year. What happens on 4 July will set the tone, and the sight of six Tests played in one day will show quickly whether this new championship feels like the start of something enduring or simply a clever rearrangement of an already packed calendar.
