Nations Championship 2026: The Table, the Finals Weekend Rules and What a Bet Actually Settles On

The format in four sentences

Twelve nations are split into two groups of six: the Northern Hemisphere group is England, France, Ireland, Italy, Scotland and Wales; the Southern is Argentina, Australia, Fiji, Japan, New Zealand and South Africa. Each nation plays the six teams from the other group once, three rounds in July and three in November, and match points decide its rank within its own group. On the finals weekend each nation plays the team ranked in the same position in the other group, first against first down to sixth against sixth, all at Allianz Stadium in London. Two titles are decided there: the Nations Championship Trophy, which goes to the winner of the 1v1 final, and the Hemisphere Trophy, which goes to whichever group collects more points across the six matches.

One consequence of that structure is easy to miss. Because every nation meets all six opponents from the other group during rounds 1 to 6, every finals weekend match is a rematch. The earlier meeting is data for anyone pricing the second one, but it was played at one of the two teams’ home grounds, while the rematch is in London. For eleven of the twelve nations that is neutral. For England it is not: Allianz Stadium is where England play their November home matches, so England’s finals weekend match is at their own ground whoever they draw.

How match points are awarded in rounds 1 to 6

A win is worth four points, a draw two, a defeat none. On top of that a team earns one bonus point for scoring four or more tries in a match, win or lose, and one for losing by seven points or fewer. A winning side can therefore take five points from a match and a losing side two, which happened in the opening round. New Zealand beat France 34–32 in Christchurch: New Zealand scored five tries and took five points; France scored four tries and lost by two, so took both bonus points: five match points for the winner, two for the loser, from a two-point margin.

That is where rugby tables get harder to read than they look. Markets on a group position settle on match points, and match points reward tries and close defeats as well as results. A handicap or winning-margin bet on a single match settles on the score alone and knows nothing about bonus points, while the same match can move the table in a way the scoreline does not show. If you are combining a match bet with a position bet on the same team, you are holding two different measures of one afternoon. How legs of a multiple compound is set out in our accumulator betting guide.

The tie-break order, and why wins come first

When two nations in the same group finish level on match points, the competition’s own format document ranks them on these deciding factors, in this order:

Putting wins first is a deliberate choice about bonus points. Over six rounds a side can collect up to two bonus points in each defeat, so a team that loses often but narrowly and with tries can climb to the same total as a team that wins more. The first criterion hands that tie back to the team with more wins before any score-based measure is consulted. Anyone used to reading points difference as the automatic second column will misread a close table in November.

The coin toss at the end matters for one reason: it means the process always produces an order. Two nations cannot share a position, so a group-position market in this competition should never need a dead-heat rule. The same logic, applied to football, is on our Nations League tiebreakers page, where the order is different again.

The table after three rounds

Each nation has played three of its six group matches. The figures below were built by us from the score and try count of all eighteen July matches in World Rugby’s match data, applying the points system above, and then checked against an independently maintained table: every figure matches. Pts is match points, BP is bonus points and Tries is tries scored.

Two ties exist, and both show the tie-break order working exactly as written. England and Ireland are level on 10 points with two wins each, so the first criterion does not separate them and points difference does: England +48, Ireland −1. South Africa and New Zealand are level on 15 with three wins each, and points difference puts South Africa (+81) ahead of New Zealand (+51).

The bonus-point column carries information the win column hides. Australia have one win and more bonus points than anyone else in their group, four, and sit above Argentina and Japan, who also have one win. France lead the North with the same two wins as Scotland, England and Ireland, and the difference is bonus points. A table this compressed is exactly where the order of the criteria, rather than the size of any margin, decides who plays whom in London.

The November fixtures, in your time zone

All eighteen November matches are hosted by the Northern Hemisphere nations. Times below were read from World Rugby’s match data and cross-checked against a second published fixture list; the conversions are ours. The clocks help here: the UK and Ireland are on GMT, Malta on CET (one hour ahead), Eastern Canada on EST from 1 November (five hours behind; Vancouver is a further three hours behind Toronto), and New Zealand on NZDT (thirteen hours ahead), which puts most matches in the early hours of the next day there.

Round 6 is built differently from the two rounds before it. All six matches are on Saturday 21 November, in three pairs that kick off at the same minute: 14:10, 16:40 and 20:10 UK time. Rankings that decide the finals pairings will be changing in two matches at once, three times in one day. For anyone following the table in play, a position can move because of a try in a match you are not watching.

The finals weekend: six matches, two trophies, three kinds of draw

After round 6 every nation’s individual points total is reset to nothing. The finals weekend runs on a separate points system in which each result scores for a hemisphere, not for a nation. The running order, the value of each match and what happens if it is level after 80 minutes are all set by the competition’s format document:

Golden point means the first score of any kind ends the match. In the five matches below the final, one ten-minute period is played and if nobody scores the match is recorded as a draw, half a point to each hemisphere. In the 1v1 final two ten-minute halves are played and, if they are scoreless too, a kicking competition decides it. The final always has a winner; the other five do not have to.

The format document gives the day and the order of the six matches. It does not give kick-off times, and the pairings cannot be known until round 6 is complete, so any finals weekend match market that names two teams can only be offered from the evening of 21 November, six days before the first match.

80 minutes or the whole match: what your bet settles on

Rugby union match betting is normally offered on the result at the end of normal time, with the draw as a third outcome. That is the familiar case in any league match, where a draw is simply a draw. On this finals weekend it stops being simple, because the competition itself plays on after 80 minutes and the scoreboard at the final whistle may not be the one that decides anything. Take one level score and follow it through three different questions.

The 1v1 final adds a fourth question, because it cannot end level. A team can draw the final on the 80-minute market and still lift the trophy after a kicking competition. A bet on the 80-minute draw and a bet on that team to win the tournament can both be winners from the same match, and a bet on the same team to win the match on 80 minutes can lose while they lift the trophy. This is the same distinction football draws between ninety minutes and extra time and penalties, applied to a sport where the extra period is decided by the first score.

None of this is exotic, but it is new, and a market name is the quickest way to see which question a bet answers. “Match result” or “80 minutes” is one question. “To lift the trophy”, “to win the championship” or “outright” is another; long-dated bets of that kind are covered in our outright betting guide. Where a market’s name leaves it open, the operator’s rugby union rules decide, and they are worth reading before the weekend rather than after it.

The Hemisphere Trophy is almost always decided by the final

Seven points are available on the finals weekend: one for each of the five matches below the final and two for the final itself. The first hemisphere to reach four points wins the Hemisphere Trophy, and if the two finish level on 3.5 points each, the winner of the 1v1 final decides it.

Put those rules together and a simpler rule falls out. Unless one hemisphere has already reached four points from the first five matches, whoever wins the 1v1 final also wins the Hemisphere Trophy. We checked it by enumerating every possible combination of results, three outcomes for each of the five lower matches and two for the final: 486 combinations in all. In 42 of them the two trophies go to different hemispheres, and every one of those 42 is a case where the Hemisphere Trophy was already won before the final started. There is no combination in which the final is still live for the Hemisphere Trophy and the final’s loser takes it.

Reaching four points early is harder than it sounds. It needs four wins from the five lower matches, or three wins and two draws. The earliest it can happen is after Match 4 on the Saturday, and only if one hemisphere has won all four matches played by then.

For a bettor, that makes a Hemisphere Trophy position and a position on the 1v1 final close to the same exposure in most outcomes. Two bets that look like diversification across two markets may be one bet placed twice. Our bet calculator shows what each position returns on its own; it cannot show that they tend to win and lose together, which is the part to work out before adding the second one.

What this page does not cover

It names no operator and summarises no operator’s settlement rules. Those rules are the contract for a bet and differ between firms; the competition decides the score, the operator decides what a bet does with it. It carries no prices, because a price quoted in September would be stale before November, and no selections or predicted line-ups.

Kick-off times are those published at the time of writing, and broadcast arrangements can still move a match. If you are converting prices between formats while you compare markets, the odds converter does the arithmetic, and the guide to how betting odds work explains what a price implies.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

Read on 25 September 2026. The points system, the tie-break order, the finals weekend running order, the golden point and kicking competition rules and the Hemisphere Trophy rules are from the competition’s format and points explainer, published by Six Nations Rugby on 2 July 2026. Scores, try counts, venues and kick-off times are from World Rugby’s published match data for the Nations Championship 2026; the standings were computed from them by us and checked against an independent table, and the November kick-off times against a second published fixture list. Time-zone conversions and the 486-combination count were done by script.

• Six Nations Rugby, Nations Championship 2026: Format & Match Points System explainer (PDF, 2 July 2026) — media.sixnationsrugby.com
• Six Nations Rugby, press release: Nations Championship Explainer — Format & Match Points System — media.sixnationsrugby.com
• World Rugby, Nations Championship 2026 — matches and results — world.rugby