Super Rugby Americas (SRA) is a franchise

rugby union Rugby union football, commonly known simply as rugby union in English-speaking countries and rugby 15/XV in non-English-speaking world, Anglophone Europe, or often just rugby, is a Contact sport#Terminology, close-contact team sport that orig ...

tournament format in the

Americas The Americas, sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North America and South America.''Webster's New World College Dictionary'', 2010 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Cleveland, Ohio. When viewed as a sing ...

that began its first season in February 2023 after efforts by

World Rugby World Rugby is the governing body for the sport of rugby union. World Rugby organises the Rugby World Cup every four years, the sport's most recognised and most profitable competition. It also organises a number of other international competit ...

. It is organized and led by Sudamérica Rugby, the highest rugby entity in

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

. The tournament includes seven teams through franchises. The holding of this tournament in the Americas has the precedent of the extinct ''Superliga Americana de Rugby (SLAR)'' (), a precursor competition. The name ''Super Rugby Americas'' was proposed by

to draw a parallel with Super Rugby Pacific, a competition made up of franchises from Australia, Fiji, and New Zealand.

History

SLAR (2020–2022)

SLAR was first announced in April 2019, with plans of forming between six and eight professional franchises, two each in Uruguay and Brazil, meanwhile Argentina and Chile were to get a franchise each with plans to add two teams in 2021 with an additional team in Argentina and one from Paraguay. In November, SLAR's plans changed to a league of seven clubs, two each in Brazil and Uruguay with one team each in Argentina, Chile, and Paraguay. Officially sanctioned by Sudamérica Rugby, which is consequently part of

, the league was officially launched in November 29, 2019. At the official announcement, SLAR confirmed the number of the teams for the 2020 season was set at five for the regular season due to the economic issues but SLAR was expected to be expanded at some point in the future, possibly in 2021. Cafeteros Pro (Colombia) joined at the end of the regular season to play a home and away series against the 5th-place finisher in the 2020 season before joining the league full-time. The tournament could be played without problems in 2021 and 2022. During 2022, there were already ideas to carry out a joint competition between the franchises that contested the SLAR and teams from North America. During the season, the Challenge Cup of the Americas, a friendly rugby cup, was played on an experimental way.

SRA (since 2023)

As it is a competition with franchises, the impact of the SLAR was in doubt. According to South American specialists, the success achieved by the tournament was relative but after various requests from institutions to join and participate in a larger tournament,

requested the expansion of the format towards a more ambitious and regional competition. Once the news was released, Wenceslao Tejerina, High Performance Manager for Chile, announced that they were working on a new tournament. After the announcement of the new contest, the Uruguayan Sebastián Piñeyrúa, director of the South American entity, issued the following statement: ''"Due to the success obtained in the American Rugby Super League in the two full seasons of 2021 and 2022, from South America Rugby, SLAR organizers, we are in the middle of negotiations with national unions in North and Central America, to plan the future growth of Rugby in the continent, for this reason, we are working with all the member unions and franchises participating in SLAR 2022, to plan and develop future competitions, by franchises and international. On October 27, the format will be presented and details of the new professional competition of the Americas will be given"''. In this way, after efforts by Sudamérica Rugby and

, the emergence of ''Super Rugby Americas'' was announced in October 2022, a tournament that will also be organized by USA Rugby and

Rugby Canada Rugby Canada is the national Sport governing body, governing body for the sport of rugby union in Canada. Rugby Canada was incorporated in 1974, and stems from the Canadian Rugby Football Union, a body established in 1884 that now governs amate ...

, which will include most of the clubs that competed in SLAR 2022 with the addition of franchises from the United States and Canada. According to the High Performance Manager of South America Rugby, Daniel Hourcade, the Unión Argentina de Rugby will also incorporate more franchises in the next editions of the new league.

Competition format

In 2020, Superliga Americana de Rugby was to span four months from February through May. For the first season, five of the six clubs Ceibos, Corinthians, Selknam, Olímpia Lions, and

Peñarol Club Atlético Peñarol (), more commonly referred to as Peñarol, is a Uruguayan professional football club based in Montevideo. The club currently competes in the Uruguayan Primera División, the highest tier in Uruguayan football. The nam ...

La Superliga Americana va tomando forma
by Gabriel Sarquis ''Marca'', 29 Dec 2019 planned to take part in a double round-robin regular season, playing twice against each other team, once at home and once away, for a total of eight games. The top four teams would qualify for the championship playoffs to determine a season champion. The fifth place regular season team would have played a series against Los Cafeteros Pro to determine the fifth-place team. However, on March 17, 2020, the season was postponed until 2021, as a result of the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

. Like

Super Rugby Super Rugby is a men's professional rugby union club competition involving teams from Australia, Fiji, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands. It has previously included teams from Argentina, Japan, and South Africa. Super Rugby started as the S ...

Major League Rugby Major League Rugby (MLR) is a professional rugby union competition in the United States. The league comprises 11 teams. While operating outside of the governance and oversight of the national governing body, the league is officially sanctioned ...

, and the

United Rugby Championship The United Rugby Championship (URC) is an annual rugby union competition involving professional teams from Ireland, Italy, Scotland, South Africa, and Wales. For sponsorship reasons the league is known as the Vodacom United Rugby Championship in ...

, the Super Rugby Americas has no

promotion and relegation Promotion and relegation is used by sports leagues as a process where teams can move up and down among divisions in a league system, based on their performance over a season. Leagues that use promotion and relegation systems are sometimes call ...

Teams

Current teams

There are seven teams that are due to play in the 2025 Super Rugby Americas season. * Notes:

Timeline

DateFormat = mm/dd/yyyy ImageSize = width:1000 height:auto barincrement:25 Period = from:2020 till:2026 TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal PlotArea = right:300 left:20 bottom:55 top:5 Colors = id:barcolor value:rgb(0.99,0.7,0.7) id:line value:black id:bg value:white id:current value:skyblue legend:Current_Teams id:previous value:powderblue legend:Previous_Name id:former value:pink legend:Former_Teams id:future value:rgb(0.8,0.8,0.8) legend:Future_Expansion PlotData= width:15 textcolor:black shift:(5,-5) anchor:from fontsize:s bar:0 color:black fontsize:M from:01/01/2020 till:01/01/2020 bar:0 color:white fontsize:M from:01/15/2020 till: 12/10/2021 bar:0 color:black fontsize:M from:01/01/2021 till:01/01/2021 text: Expand to 6 teams bar:0 color:white fontsize:M from:01/15/2022 till: 12/10/2022 bar:0 color:black fontsize:M from:01/01/2023 till: 01/01/2023 text: Expand to 7 teams bar:0 color:white fontsize:M from:01/15/2025 till: 12/10/2025 bar:0 color:black fontsize:M from:01/01/2026 till: 01/01/2026 text: Expand to 8 teams bar:1 color:previous fontsize:M from:01/01/2020 till:12/31/2020 text: Ceibos (2020) bar:1 color:current fontsize:M from:01/01/2023 till:end text: Dogos XV (2023−) bar:2 color:previous fontsize:M from:01/01/2020 till:12/31/2020 text: Corinthians (2020) bar:2 color:current fontsize:M from:01/01/2021 till:end text: Cobras (2021–present) bar:3 color:previous fontsize:M from:01/01/2020 till:12/31/2022 text: Olímpia Lions (2020–2022) bar:3 color:current fontsize:M from:01/01/2023 till:end text: Yacare XV (2023–) bar:4 color:current fontsize:M from:01/01/2020 till:end text:

(2020–present) bar:5 color:current fontsize:M from:01/01/2020 till:end text: Selknam (2020–present) bar:6 color:former fontsize:M from:01/01/2021 till:12/31/2022 text: Cafeteros Pro (2021–2022) bar:7 color:former fontsize:M from:01/01/2021 till:12/31/2022 text: Jaguares XV (2021–2022) bar:8 color:former fontsize:M from:01/01/2023 till:12/31/2024 text: American Raptors (2023−2024) bar:9 color:current fontsize:M from:01/01/2023 till:end text:

Pampas The Pampas (; from Quechua 'plain'), also known as the Pampas Plain, are fertile South American low grasslands that cover more than and include the Argentine provinces of Buenos Aires, La Pampa, Santa Fe, Entre Ríos, and Córdoba; all o ...

(2023−) bar:10 color:current fontsize:M from:01/01/2025 till:end text: Tarucas (2025−) bar:11 color:future fontsize:M from:01/01/2026 till:end text: Litoral (2026−) legend = orientation:horizontal position:bottom ScaleMajor = gridcolor:line unit:year increment:1 start:2020

Expansion teams

On 10 November 2020,

Colombia Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...

formalized professional rugby. The South American nation’s first professional rugby team was Cafeteros Pro. The team entered the Súper Liga Americana de Rugby (SLAR) in

2021 Like the year 2020, 2021 was also heavily defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, due to the emergence of multiple Variants of SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19 variants. The major global rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, which began at the end of 2020, continued ...

. On 6 January 2021, UAR replaced the Córdoba based team Ceibos with the Jaguares XV, following the Jaguares' departure from

. On 4 February 2021, the Brazilian side in the competition was renamed Cobras Brasil XV, dropping their affiliation with the Corinthians multi-sport club. On 13 December 2022, SLAR confirmed the replacement of Cafeteros Pro, with the reintroduction of Córdoba based team ''Dogos XV'', in the past Ceibos. On 22 December 2022, Super Rugby Americas confirmed more news; first the return of Argentine Pampas XV in substitution of Jaguares XV, second the participation of American Raptors, third the rebranded of Paraguayan team from Olimpia Lions to Yakarés XV in order to indicate that relationship between the Paraguayan Rugby Union and the soccer team Club Olimpia is ended. On 1 October 2024, it was confirmed that Tarucas will be joining in 2025 as the third Argentine franchise, based in Tucumán, and representing Northwest Argentina in order to replace American Raptors.

Expansion candidates

At the initial announcement, Brazil and Uruguay were originally slated to have two teams each, but instead one team each (Corinthians and Peñarol) went on to play in the 2020 season, meaning it may be possible for the two countries to expand in the future (

Club Nacional de Football Club Nacional de Football (, ''National Football Club'') is a Uruguayan professional sports club based in La Blanqueada, La Blanqueada, Montevideo. The club was founded on 14 May 1899 as a result of the merger between ''Uruguay Athletic Club'' an ...

was hinted at as a possibility in Uruguay) besides a possible Mexican team or a second Chilean team. With the possible change of

to a Trans-Tasman (Australasian) competition, Argentina could add a second team, the Jaguares, based in

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires, controlled by the government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Argentina. It is located on the southwest of the Río de la Plata. Buenos Aires is classified as an Alpha− glob ...

, in 2021. In November 2020, another new team was proposed for 2021, with Sudamérica Rugby officially expressing interest in the inclusion of a second Argentine

–based team in the 2021 SLAR. However, a second Argentine team did not play in 2021 and most Argentine players would leave the team either for overseas, or to enter the draft for the 2021 Súper Liga Americana de Rugby season. In October 2022, it was confirmed that the Argentine team Tucumán would replace the Colombian team Cafeteros Pro and that two North American franchises, the Canadian Pacific Pride and U.S. American Raptors, were going to participate in this new tournament renamed Super Rugby Americas. In June 2023, after losing its bid for 2022, Tucumán, plus Salta and Santiago del Estero, renewed their request to enter the tournament in order to have 3 Argentine franchises in the future. Los Naranjas could be a new team in Super Rugby Americas 2025. A Mexican franchise could also be considered for the future. A hypothetical fourth Argentine Franchise, named Litoral, a combination of following Unions regional Entre Rios,

Rosario Rosario () is the largest city in the central provinces of Argentina, Argentine province of Santa Fe Province, Santa Fe. The city, located northwest of Buenos Aires on the west bank of the Paraná River, is the third-most populous city in the ...

and Santa Fe is expected to enter in the tournament for the 2026 season.

Former teams

;Notes

Champions

Titles by team

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Super Rugby Americas