The 2026 Guinness Men’s Six Nations Rugby Championship runs from this Thursday 7 February to 14 March, featuring England, France, Ireland, Italy, Scotland and Wales in a tighter, five-week schedule, kicking off with France v Ireland in Paris and culminating in ‘Super Saturday’ with France v England.
The Guinness Women’s Six Nations returns in 2026 with a new format. The action gets underway on 11 April, before five rounds of fixtures offer fans five days of back-to-back clashes in the form of four ‘Super Saturday’ formats, with Round Five becoming a ‘Super Sunday’ on 17 May.
“In terms of Six Nations Rugby as an entity, it will be the busiest year we’ve ever had, not just in terms of rights ownership of games but from a broadcast production standpoint as well,” Six Nations Rugby head of broadcast partnerships Siobhán McCartan tells SVG Europe.
“Not everyone gets to go to the stadium, but how can we take someone closer than they’ve ever been before?”
“As we go into this new four-year cycle for Six Nations, the in-house team is overseeing far more games than we ever have before – meaning nine of the 15 Men’s games will be produced by Six Nations Rugby under our direct remit.
“What we want from every single game, working with our fantastic partners, is world-class broadcast production – but also to be really consistent.
“We all love watching the unique atmosphere venue to venue, but it is really important to us that the consistency is there in terms of production from match to match. We also have the Under-20s, running alongside the Men’s, and we’ll produce nine of those Friday night games as well.
“It is incredibly positive news for rugby, in terms of free-to-air coverage. We will be showing the games on RTÉ and Virgin Media Television in Ireland; on BBC and ITV in the UK, with S4C taking Welsh language rights, plus the added pay TV option for some of the games in the UK – the BBC games – via Premier Sports; and France Télévisions in France.
“France TV are our partner for the four year cycle, though they have recently sublicensed some games to TF1 this year – who are also a partner of ours. In Italy, Sky Italia are still our partners, and all of the Italian games are also free-to-air in Italy. So, if you are watching in your home market, you will at a minimum see your home team playing free-to-air, and in many cases all the games free-to-air.
“We know that Six Nations is one of the big events,” says McCartan. “It brings in rugby fans, but it also brings in sports fans who just want to experience a sporting event together. So keeping that free-to-air piece is really positive for us, for the new cycle. We’re in 170 territories globally, on top of what we do with our home territories. You’re looking at 175 territories taking the world feed – and that’s why we take it so seriously in terms of consistent excellent coverage with all our production partners.”
Six Nations Rugby has a standard minimum 28-camera plan for Men’s games, all including use of Spidercam. Coordinating technical producer Alan Burns says on some games “we’re going to run super motion on the Spidercam, for the first time. We’re hoping we’ll get some nice images from behind the attacking team as they come close to the try-line, and penalty kicks and conversions as well. We’re going to do this on five games, as a test. We’re also looking at using some scrummage and set-piece line cameras, that move along with the play line.
“We’re seeing more of our broadcast partners when playing away from home. Everybody wants to come on-site – pitch-side on-site. They want to be in the thick of the action and the atmosphere,” says Burns.
“We’re also seeing a lot more on-pitch hits as well,” continues McCartan. “We will be facilitating time for broadcasters to actually go onto the pitch, during the warm-ups, where they’re bringing the fan into the thick of it far more.”
AE Live continues as Six Nations graphics delivery partner, running English, French, Italian and Welsh-language feeds, and in some cases branded and unbranded feeds (Guinness and non-Guinness).
Distribution partner for Six Nations Rugby connectivity is Pitch International, who will pick up all branded and unbranded world feed signals leaving each stadium. Pitch will use various fibre providers out of venues to ensure resilience, also handling onward global distribution to all partner broadcasters and international takers.
“We have a new stats data partner, Oval Insights, and as the championship evolves we’ll be looking to increase storytelling, so in the latter rounds we’ll be able to bring new things to screen to tell the narrative of the championship thus far,” says McCartan.
“The other thing we’re looking to elevate this year is our world feed programming. We’re adding more colour and shoulder content programming to that world feed, pre-game and post-game. Global takers who aren’t necessarily doing a full studio presentation themselves will be able to tap into and add more complete editorial to the match itself. This is new, and will also be run by the Six Nations in-house production team.”
Transformation with generative AI
In September 2025 Capgemini became the official digital transformation partner of Six Nations Rugby, spanning the men’s and women’s game, up to 2029. Over the five-year period, Capgemini plans to leverage AI and generative AI-powered innovations to deliver deeper match insights, helping viewers better understand key match moments through enhanced match data integration.
“One of the cool things we’ll be doing with Capgemini on-screen is a live editorial stat and live translated as well, which is new,” says McCartan.
“It is live translated as the story comes through to the world feed producer; it picks out the relevant stats and they are live translated into French and Italian for our numerous feeds. There are plenty of other sports doing that in English, but not so many doing multi-language live, during the game. Capgemini are a key part of the project bringing that to air and driving that innovation.”
“We have also fine-tuned the way the bunker and the TMO operation works,” adds Burns. “Originally the TMO was in one area and the bunker was in a separate area. They’re now in one area where four eyes are watching, so that has evolved to a more streamlined operation.
“And this is our first Six Nations with TMO in bowl. We had ref mic in the stadium last year, but now, when there is a TMO review, key moments in the conversation are not just one-sided — the referee – you hear the interaction between the referee and the TMO. Every stadium has a different PA and is slightly different, so we have spent a lot of time working on refining this as well.
“These refinements have been made so that key moments are informative both to the TV viewer and to the fans in bowl. They involve broadcast, sports pres in the stadium, rugby departments, and the officials departments – so a lot of moving parts, trying to bring the fan closer to the action with these types of initiatives,” he says.
Production planning for eleven venues
The 2026 Guinness Men’s calendar for Six Nations has one fallow week; in previous years it had two fallow weeks. The Women’s Six Nations schedule has moved to start in mid-April, four weeks after the Men’s.
“Not so long ago, Men’s and Women’s were still running concurrently in the same window,” says McCartan. “This new window is definitely better, with free-to-air coverage from national broadcasters available at that time. BBC will be the partner in the UK, RTÉ and Virgin again in Ireland, France TV in France, Sky Italia, and S4C for Welsh language highlights, so effectively the same partners as the Men’s championship.
“Building obviously on the massive success of the World Cup and the appetite there is for rugby now in England, it will hopefully propel the Women’s Six Nations even further forward. But that’s just one market; what’s positive is that we’re seeing growth in all markets.
“Scotland are going to Scottish Gas Murrayfield for the first time for a women’s game. Ireland are going to play in the Aviva Stadium for the first time, for their final game. We’re seeing it step up in every single market, which is fantastic.
“That will be another production plan! We’re also doing a lot of in-house production for that championship, with the key difference that it is over eleven different venues – which presents quite a challenge.
“In terms of our innovations and refinements, everything is done in an effort to bring the fan closer to what’s happening in the bowl,” concludes McCartan. “Not everyone gets to go to the stadium, but how can we take someone closer than they’ve ever been before?
“That’s through working with our unions and federations on more player access pre-game, in-game, half-time, post-game, better access to coaches, being on the warm-ups for hits for our broadcasters – these are the elements that build the colourful, dynamic picture for the fan viewing at home. That’s what drives a lot of our decision making, both in terms of technology and the player access piece.”
