Ultimate Sevens set to launch club-based format in Cardiff in September 2026

Ultimate Sevens, a new club-based sevens rugby competition, will make its debut in Cardiff on 12 September 2026, bringing together more than 130 athletes across six men’s and women’s teams drawn from continental regions around the world.

The tournament marks a deliberate departure from the national-team model that defines the HSBC SVNS World Championship. Instead of representing their countries, players will compete for clubs designed to reflect the major rugby-playing regions of the globe — a structure that Tom Mitchell, the competition’s Sport and Innovation Director, believes will produce a more concentrated showcase of elite talent.

“We’re really pleased that we’re creating essentially the first ever sevens clubs where you’ve got international stars rubbing shoulders alongside other international stars exclusively,” Mitchell said. “We believe there’s an appetite for it. We think this will create a really engaging spectacle for people who love sevens.”

Mitchell and the organisers identified a gap in the calendar following the conclusion of the SVNS season, and used the extended off-season window to rethink the format. The goal, he explained, was to isolate and amplify what makes sevens compelling — the pace, the jeopardy, and the accessibility for newer audiences.

“People in the world of sevens appreciate what an amazing sport it is and what a brilliant spectacle it is,” Mitchell said. “Right the way back to Rio [2016 Olympics], which was a huge landmark moment for the sport. It’s shown this amazing ability to captivate fans and to be a sport that is not only incredibly captivating for people to understand it, but also a way of new people coming to rugby.”

Mitchell also pointed to sevens’ historical roots — the format has existed for nearly 150 years — as an advantage over rival sports currently attempting to engineer their own abbreviated versions from scratch.

“The world we live in now, where other sports properties are trying to create their own short format and have had mixed successes with it, rugby has always had its short format,” he said. “What we’ve tried to do with Ultimate Sevens is meet those challenges by picking out the best bits of the game — the jeopardy, the amazing athletes, the hugely competitive nature of the short format sport — and actually double down on that.”

The competition has roots in the Ultimate Sevens Rugby Academy, originally founded in 2013 by Tom Burwell, and the organisers say the academy system remains central to the long-term vision for the project.