Premiership: promotion from the Championship returns from 2025/2026

The Rugby Football Union has approved, from the 2025/2026 season, promotion from the Championship, satisfying the clubs of the English second series.

The new rule will therefore allow the winner of the Championship to play a home and away play-off with the worst-placed team in the top division which will be worth promotion to the Premiership.

The Premier League has not had a promotion since 2021, when Saracens were relegated for breaching the salary cap in the previous season.

The RFU board also voted to relax the minimum operating standards for promotion, which deprived Doncaster Knights and Ealing Trailfinders of promotion to the Premiership in 2022 because their stadiums were too small to meet the minimum capacity of 10,001.

The Championship will also have better control of its commercial deals, with the creation of a second-tier board.

Read also: Premiership: the English federation working to restore promotions and relegations

Premiership: from 2025/2026 we will return to promotion from the Championship

Championship chairman Simon Halliday praised the RFU’s decision and believes the new rule could give second division clubs a good chance of moving up the table. He also highlighted how the decision makes English rugby fair, from the highest level to the lowest.

“We got what we came for. Now our clubs, and every club, can realistically dream of promotion to the Premiership,” said Simon Halliday.

“There is now a real growth path for ambitious clubs. The top level is linked back to the rest of English rugby and we can use our commercial potential to fund the growth that rugby desperately needs at our level.”

It is a major decision for English rugby which has fallen on hard times with the Worcester Warriors, Wasps, London Irish and Jersey Reds all succumbing to financial problems in the last two years.

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