LONG READ World Rugby CEO Alan Gilpin: ‘This is what we’ve always wanted; a connected global calendar where every match has meaning.’

A new dawn is rising on our global game. Alongside the Nations Championship, the Nations Cup will now become an integral part of rugby’s lexicon, as 12 participating unions will compete in two pools of six to be crowned champions.

In pool A – Americas and Pacific –  Canada, Chile, Samoa, Tonga, Uruguay and the USA do battle while in pool B – Europe, Asia and Africa – Georgia, Hong Kong China, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Zimbabwe are the sides involved.

Each team will face every other team in a full round-robin format spanning both Test windows and at the end of November the top ranked union in each pool will be crowned the inaugural Nations Cup winners.

The points system will be similar to the Six Nations and Rugby Championship with four points for a win, a bonus point for scoring four or more tries and a losing bonus point for losing by seven points or fewer.

In a wide-ranging interview, RugbyPass spoke to World Rugby’s chief executive Alan Gilpin to explain the new tournament and his hopes for the future of the game.

RugbyPass (RP): The game went professional in August 1995 and for a period of nine years there was little structure in Test rugby beyond the Six Nations and World Cups. Since 2004 rugby fans have become accustomed to the July Tests and November series, so how did we get to a point where there’s now meaningful competition for the world’s top 24 sides outside those tournaments?

Alan Gilpin (AG): Well, it’s been 10 years in the making. It was in 2016 that World Rugby, the Six Nations, SANZAAR and wider unions started a conversation, asking, ‘how do we make ‘friendlies’ more competitive and meaningful to give the fans what they want?’ In 2018, we did more strategic work on what is now the Nations Cup and Nations Championship and tried to land it before the 2019 World Cup in Japan, but for myriad reasons it didn’t happen and then COVID hit. World Rugby rekindled the conversation in 2022 and here we are in 2026 with unilateral agreement, ready to go.

RP: As the hours count down to kick-off how nervous are you that everything will go to plan?

AG: I hope the matches will do the talking for us. It kicks off this weekend and by November I think people will understand the concept and interest will build, especially for finals weekend. I hope it will get some good coverage, because if you take the opening weekend’s fixtures, it looks mouth-watering – and I say that more as a rugby fan than as World Rugby’s chief executive. Ten years from now, hopefully we’ll all acknowledge that in this moment, we moved the global game forward competitively. Of course, like any new tournament it will take time to bed in, but like WXV, this is what we’ve always wanted; a connected global calendar where every match has meaning and competitiveness is accelerated.

RP: How do you see the competition evolving and will there be chance for Nations Cup teams to move up to the Nations Championship?

AG: Every one of the 24 teams to have qualified for the men’s World Cup now has a golden opportunity. Over time, the hope is other nations will push through regional competitions into this first and second division. I can guarantee there will be an opportunity in future for movement between the two divisions but how and when is at the crux of the debate. That commitment is there and the decision was endorsed by Council back in October 2023.

RP: Some traditionalists still think rugby should be about six-month long tours on a boat to far-flung climes, top hat and tails for dinner and a trip down the Zambezi hunting game, what is your message to those who are averse to change?

AG: I’d say rugby has always evolved but maybe not quickly enough. For much of the 20th century, we were used to eight dominant teams – the old Five Nations and Tri Nations sides. With our support Argentina made it into the top tier and Italy have recently made great strides in the Six Nations, however, if we’re honest, that’s not a huge change since turning professional. Now Japan and Fiji have earned the right, on and off the field, by being competitive at World Cups, and in Japan’s case, hosting the tournament. Being in the top 12 gives them absolute certainty fixtures-wise in even years up to 2030 and that’s significant.

RP: What hope can you give the Nations Cup sides who want the opportunity to play top 12 sides to improve competitiveness?

AG: Over the last number of years, even if you’re Georgia, Portugal or Uruguay and consistently qualifying for World Cups, you’ve been lucky to get one or two fixtures a year guaranteed for the July and November international windows.

I’d also add, those sides have often been playing those fixtures without access to their best players because they haven’t been released by clubs and leagues. The Nations Cup is locked in for those six weekends, so you now have certainty, which is what the unions requested. Saying that, in the odd years we’ve also had feedback that for Rugby World Cup warm-ups they still have the chance to play in some of those top 12 teams.

Teams like Georgia are desperate to test themselves against the ‘first division’, therefore we’ve already started working on crossover fixtures and plenty are confirmed for 2027 and we’re working on fixtures for 2029. I must stress not every Nations Cup side is ready for them but if you go back to the 16-team Rugby World Cup in 1987 to where we are now with 24 teams and the global calendar, it’s a big leap forward.

RP: Given the scenes in an expanded FIFA World Cup in the US, would it be a dream in 2031 to hypothetically see a side like Spain toppling the All Blacks and witness scenes of hysteria on the streets replicating what we saw in Paraguay or Ecuador recently?

AG: Absolutely. It’s a fascinating to watch this 48-team football World Cup. Most of us can predict the last eight – maybe not with the Germans and Dutch out – but like football, we are trying to build a broader competitive base for the sport. It’s amazing, isn’t it? Some sides have made World Cups before but never won a knockout game, but now it’s 32 teams, they’re doing that and sending their fans crazy.

In Australia, we’re going to go deeper than the current top 12. There will be three or four teams in this second group who are going to qualify for the last 16 and earn a place knockout rugby, and then you never know what’s going to happen. The hope is by 2031, one of those, whether it’s a USA or Canada or Spain or Georgia, are going to topple a top team in the last 16, and suddenly they’ve made the quarters. We’ve seen the lift it’s given Fiji and Japan, so it can be done.

RP: Have there been times over this last decade where you’ve thought the Nations Cup wasn’t going to come to fruition?

AG: I wouldn’t say I’ve lost sleep but in the last 10 years we’ve had so many bumps in the road. Not landing the competition 2019 was a big setback. We put a huge shift in in 2018-19 to get it done and had a backer in the Wanda Group, a Chinese conglomerate. It was a significant 12-year commercial rights deal, but then COVID hit and the Six Nations did their CVC deal.

It’s taken time, post-COVID, to get back on track. In global sport, there’s often impatience for change but even in 2022 when we were reshaping the tournament, we knew that 2026 was the earliest opportunity we could do it due to the calendar already in place. It’s taken hell of a long time to get here but when the rugby world wakes up tomorrow to get to watch back-to-back rugby literally all day, it will have been worth it. It’s the culmination of a lot of people’s hard work over a significant period and they should pat themselves on the back.

RP: Are you expecting some robust feedback about what you’ve got right and wrong in this first iteration of the Nations Cup?

AG: I would expect so. We’re all going to learn a lot in this first year. We’re going to learn about travel schedules. We’re going to learn about some of the scheduling and the matchups. We accept it’s not going to be perfect from the starting gun, but we’ll learn quickly, I can promise you that.

Some of the things that have been criticised, we’re already live to. We know there will be travel challenges. We know it’s not ideal some of the teams can’t play all their fixtures at home, but we’ll learn and iterate over time. Are there going to be challenges and lessons to learn? Absolutely, but we truly believe this is a real opportunity for the game to grow.

RP: How much ambition and confidence do you take from the fact if you know how Test rugby is locked in for 2026, 2028, 2030 you can make the Nations Cup a vehicle that can benefit the participants financially?

AG: One of the things we’ve discovered by working really closely with the USA in recent years is from year to year, they had no certainty fixtures-wise. How do you build your fanbase from that? How do you build your media and commercial partnerships? Broadly speaking, these 12 teams, particularly where they have qualified for a men’s World Cup for the first time like Hong Kong China, or are returning after a long absence, like Zimbabwe or Spain, can actually say to commercial partners, ‘we’re not just at the 2027 World Cup, we actually know now what this year looks like, the next year looks like and so on’.

That that builds a commercial opportunity they’ve never had before and puts us in a position to start building fandom, between the men’s game and WXV in the women’s game. Suddenly the global calendar doesn’t feel so disjointed.

RP: Can you give an example of Nations Cup country who could come on leaps and bounds in the years to come?

AG: I’ll take Spain. They’re now in the top level of men’s and women SVNS. They’re in the Nations Cup and the Men’s Rugby World Cup. Add WXV and the Women’s World Cup and suddenly they’re having meaningful conversations with government, funding partners, broadcasters and sponsors, which is a very different conversation to the one they were having two years ago. This is the opportunity they all need. Chile is another nation making great strides. They were a brilliant addition to the World Cup in France in 2023 and they’ve qualified for 2027. At home, they’re hosting the Under 20s Challenger with us in September and October. Those conversations are the only way we have been able to break the dependency on World Rugby, whose remit is to help them find their own feet. It will drive rugby’s global growth, because it is going to make more countries open to bigger markets and more fans.

RP: Some of the strongest sides in the Nations Cup are desperate to play in the Nations Championship, so what would your message be to their players who aspire to reach new heights?

AG: It’s always been vital, particularly to World Rugby, that this competition, just like WXV, gives teams an opportunity to move. For a nation in their regional competition, like Rugby Europe or Rugby Africa, at some point in the future, they need to have the opportunity to be in that first division. What’s been great in all the work behind the scenes in the last two years is that key facet has always remained.

Understandably, the teams who are in the current top 12 want to know what would that could look like in the future? If you’re in the Six Nations of the Rugby Championship, what does it mean economically for them? How do we make sure they don’t fall off a metaphorical cliff. Those conversations won’t wait until 2030; they are live now. We’ve got to make sure the teams that want that opportunity are ready. Every stakeholder is committed until 2030 and then we’ll review what the game looks like beyond that. Is it expansion rather than relegation and promotion? It’s all up for debate.

RP: How important is it to you the Nations Cup and Championship are being broadcast on terrestrial TV as a growth tool?

AG: With no disrespect to the broadcasters who’ve been involved in July and November windows in recent years to have some of rugby’s biggest broadcasters like ITV and TF1 showing games in July and November is huge.

Take TF1. They are great broadcast partners for men’s and women’s rugby World Cup and they’re doubling down on their commitment to international rugby, which is which is fantastic. With RugbyPass TV streaming the Nations Cup for free, more people than ever are going to see these games at a time when the games have got more meaning than before, which is brilliant.

RP: How much do you think finals weekend in November will capture the public’s attention?

We all think it’s going to be bloody brilliant. Two games on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the Allianz Stadium should whet the appetite of every rugby fan and when it’s been played there will be feedback from players and fans which will inform us how 2028 and 2030 will look like. We certainly know the nations playing in the Nations Cup are interested in what a finals weekend might look like. We don’t have the sort of calendar approval for that fourth weekend right now but it’s something we might work on for the future. We want to learn each step that way and try and be agile collectively to take advantage of those opportunities in the future.

RP: Finally, do you think these competitions are going take away from the magic of the Rugby World Cup?

AG: No. This is our chance for rugby, in those even years, to have more teams with more meaningful fixtures. World Cups are unique. We know that. Yes, there’s going to Nations Championship champions, but will that make the Springboks, All Blacks, Wallabies, England or France want to win the World Cup any less? Not in my mind.