A new year is upon us, and with it, 2026 is set to usher in massive changes across both Australian rugby and the global sport at large.
All sides of the Australian and global game are set for a shake-up, as eyes look ahead to the 2027 Men’s Rugby World Cup and the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
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Rugby.com.au breaks down ten things we’re excited for across the 2026 season:
The next generation pathways are set to have a new look in 2026, off the back of promising signs in 2025 following the Australia U18s clean sweep of New Zealand and an undefeated U20 Rugby Championship campaign in South Africa.
The Super Rugby U19s competition is set to be rebranded to Super Rugby NextGen, with the competition now kicking off in February to line up with the annual U20 Rugby Championship, which takes place in April and the World Championships in June.
Super Rugby U16s will continue to run concurrently with Super Rugby AUS, which will return for a second season following the end of the national premier grade club season.
With Australia U16s and U18s also set for fixtures alongside Sevens development teams, fans will have plenty of opportunities to see the next generation of Wallabies and Wallaroos in action.
The build-up to the 2027 Rugby World Cup draws ever closer following the confirmation of pools in early December and a new-look format for rugby’s biggest tournament.
The momentum will hit another level on 3rd February 2026, marked as the confirmation date of fixtures for the tournament.
This will include who will face the Wallabies in the World Cup opener, as well as the location of all key fixtures for both the pool and the knockout stages of the tournament.
The news will add plenty of spice to the Wallabies’ 14 upcoming fixtures this year, including a reunion with former coach Eddie Jones as the first fixtures to kick off the Les Kiss era of the side.
The 2026 Super Rugby Pacific season will get underway in February, with new themed rounds and exciting clashes ahead, and Australian sides looking to push their case for further honours.
However, the big announcement is the return of Super Round, which will head across the Tasman for the first time after a year in the wilderness in 2025.
The round will take place over the ANZAC Day weekend from April 24-26, christening the new One New Zealand Stadium, the new 25,000-seat venue under a fixed roof in Christchurch.
With the Crusaders also being the defending champions, the 2026 Super Round is set to be one of the biggest weekends of the competition yet.
The Perth Sevens is set to hit the ground running in February, returning to HBF Park for a weekend of scorching hot action in the sun.
Locked in as the Australian leg of the HSBC World Series SVNS for the next three years, the 2025 iteration saw both Australian sides make their respective finals, with the women going on to win and the men going down to Argentina in the final.
The 2026 iteration is set to be even bigger than before. With the women leading the current tournament and a young men’s squad making the Dubai Final, expectations will be high the Aussies can deliver once again on home soil.
The women’s rugby calendar is going to look very different in 2026, with the Wallaroos set for a huge calendar that will see them playing ten test matches a year from March to October.
Kicking off with a Fijiana rematch in Canberra, the Wallaroos will head to the USA for matches against Canada and the United States, with matches against the Black Ferns either side of a rescheduled Super Rugby Women’s season running from June to August.
Completing the season will be the WXV tournament, likely to be played in Europe, with the Wallaroos finishing in October with a two-match home test series against Scotland.
It looms as a big challenge for the side, with a new look coaching outfit and playing group looking to build towards a maiden home World Cup in 2029.
After 28 Test matches in the top job, head coach Joe Schmidt will bow out as head coach of the Wallabies following the July internationals.
His time in the top job has seen many highs, including famous victories in England and South Africa and strong performances against the British & Irish Lions.
However, his final three Tests loom as an opportunity for the veteran coach after a difficult end-of-year tour.
Having lost to Italy, Ireland and France at the end of 2025, the Wallabies will be hungry to snap losing streaks to each side on home soil. The men in gold have not defeated the Italians and the Irish since 2018, and the French since 2021.
The three final Tests provide an ideal opportunity for Schmidt to not only have a shot at redemption, but also definitively sign off his time as Wallabies coach, having taken the side from a team beaten down after the 2023 Rugby World Cup to genuine contenders.
The 2025-26 SVNS series is already underway, but the competition is set to go to a new level.
The competition will see a new format in 2026, with six events set to be followed by three Championship Grand Final events in Hong Kong, Valladolid and Bordeaux to crown the winner of the series.
The new format is set to supercharge the SVNS system, with the winners of the second and third divisions joining the eight established sides in both the men’s and women’s competitions.
The Australian sides are set to be right in the mix of the new format, with the women’s team currently leading the ladder after victory in Cape Town, while the men, with a young rebuilding side, showed promise, making the Dubai final.
It won’t just be the SVNS format and the Women’s XV test schedule that will look different in 2026, with the men’s game set to have its first iteration of the new biennial competition, the Nations Championship.
The first iteration will see 12 teams up for contention, with all Six Nations sides and Rugby Championship sides set to be joined by Fiji and Japan for legs across the July and November windows, labelled the Southern and Northern Hemisphere series.
The new format will also see a second division below the Championship, the World Rugby Nations Cup, which will see emerging nations compete for honours across an America-Pacific pool, and a European-African-Asian pool.
Australia will face Italy, France and Ireland in the Southern Hemisphere series in July, and then England, Scotland and Wales in the Northern Hemisphere series in November.
The Wallaroos will enter a new era in 2026, as they commence their preparations for a home Rugby World Cup in 2029.
A core group of players has been finalised and test matches confirmed; however, the final piece of the puzzle is who will lead this group to the event as head coach.
An interim coaching team have been put together featuring some of the best rugby brains in Australia, with Jo Yapp’s assistant coach Sam Needs set to lead the outfit as interim head coach until the end of the 2026 Pacific Four Series.
Beyond that, a final full-time coaching panel will be selected, with several of the current staff likely heavy favourites to take the top job.
The front-runners will likely be ACT Brumbies Women head coach Andy Friend and NSW Waratahs Women head coach Mike Ruthven, with both in the interim coaching staff as technical advisor and assistant coach, respectively.
Both bring an extensive resume of rugby knowledge and are well respected in the current group - and with the side in need of a head coach to follow in Yapp’s footsteps, both loom as ideal candidates to try and take the Wallaroos to the next level.
The 2025 season has been a wild ride for Les Kiss - from his Reds side putting 82 points on the Bristol Bears to finishing with a high-scoring series against the Saitama Wild Knights.
However, the biggest news of the year was the confirmation that he will succeed Joe Schmidt as Wallabies coach following the end of his third and final year as Reds coach.
Kiss’ 2026 is set to be even bigger, starting with his best chance to try and nab a Super Rugby title - his Reds side is an imposing outfit stuffed with 17 Wallabies, not to mention several non-capped players of significant national interest.
He’ll take over from Schmidt after July, with his first test match seeing his side face off against Eddie Jones’ Japan, with matches against the Springboks, All Blacks and the Nations Championship to follow.
Kiss will need to hit the ground running in his tenure and work closely with Schmidt to keep the Wallabies progressing, because after those Nations Championship fixtures, a World Cup year awaits.
