Circle 7 February 2026, 20:00 GMT on your calendar and book the south-west corner of Twickenham lower tier–England v France launches the tournament with the same block that delivered six tries in 2025 now priced at £95 adults, £25 U-16s. The RFU releases an extra 2 000 single-match seats on the first Monday of every month; set a phone reminder for 6 October 2025, 10:00 BST and you will beat the touts by 48 hours.
Ireland open as 8/11 favourites with most UK books after winning 11 of their last 12 championship matches; back them now if you fancy the Grand Slam because the price shortens to 4/9 once they beat Italy in Rome on round one. France sit at 3/1 despite losing Dupont and Ntamack to sevens duty until June–keep an eye on the squad announcement on 20 January 2026: if Jalibert and Lucu are both fit, the odds will crash within minutes.
Scotland path is brutal–away trips to Dublin and Paris inside the first three weekends–so their 9/1 outsider quote looks skinny rather than generous. Instead, sprinkle each-way money on Wales at 14/1; Warren Gatland has picked 19-year-old Exeter lock Jonny Green who hits 45 tackles per 80 in the Premiership, and the Principality Stadium roof will be closed for every home date after the Welsh Rugby Union secured a new £12 million weather-insurance deal.
The fixture list rewards fast starters: four of the last five champions won round one away. Italy host England in Parma at 14:15 GMT on 8 February; the Azzurri have lost their last 11 openers but covered a +18 handicap in eight of them. If you prefer player markets, back Ange Capuozzo to score first at 12/1–he dotted down twice in that window during the 2025 Autumn Nations.
Round-by-Round Fixtures & Kick-Off Times
Book your weekend plans now: every Saturday in 2026 delivers a triple-header, and the Sunday rest day is gone for good. Kick-offs sit at 14:15, 16:45 and 20:00 GMT so you can hop from pub lunch to late dinner without missing a scrum.
Round 1 lines up Wales v Italy at 14:15 on 7 February, followed by Ireland v France at 16:45 and England v Scotland closing the day at 20:00. Twickenham night slot guarantees a frosty 8 °C, so pack gloves and order the mulled cider early.
| Round 1 – 7 Feb 2026 | Kick-Off (GMT) | Venue |
|---|---|---|
| Wales vs Italy | 14:15 | Principality Stadium |
| Ireland vs France | 16:45 | Aviva Stadium |
| England vs Scotland | 20:00 | Twickenham |
Round 2 flips the order: Scotland host Italy at Murrayfield at 14:15 on 14 February, France meet England in Lyon at 16:45, and Ireland welcome Wales under lights in Dublin at 20:00. The Lyon fixture is the first Six Nations game there since 1972, so expect a 59 000 sell-out and hotel prices 40 % above Paris.
Round 3 brings the tournament only Friday night clash: Wales v France in Cardiff at 20:00 on 20 February. The WRU has scheduled a pre-match choir parade from 18:30, and trains from Paddington reach the city at 19:12, giving you a tight but doable 48-minute dash to your seat.
Super Saturday on 21 March compresses three title-deciding games into 270 minutes. Italy v Wales opens at 12:30 GMT, England v Ireland follows at 15:00, and France v Scotland finishes at 17:30. The stagger means points-difference could swing four times in one afternoon; keep the calculator app open.
All Italian home games again start at 15:00 local time (16:00 GMT) to suit RAI family audience, so the Stadio Olimpico will be sunlit but chilly. Metro Line B stops right outside; buy a €1.50 BIT ticket, not the €7 tourist pass, and walk from Circo Massimo to shave ten minutes.
If you need flexibility, ITV streams every match free for 30 days after broadcast; BBC iPlayer keeps full replays for a year. Download both apps before you travel–roaming data in Rome Curva Sud drops to 3G when 70 000 fans hit the same tower.
Weekend 1: Full schedule, broadcast windows, and ticket drop dates
Circle 31 January 2026 on every calendar you own; the opening Super Saturday sells out in under 14 min if you miss the 9 a.m. GMT drop on 3 September 2025. Wales v Italy kicks off at 2:15 p.m. in Cardiff, England faces Ireland at 4:45 p.m. in Twickenham, and France meets Scotland at 8 p.m. in Marseille–three staggered kick-offs give you a full-day stadium-hopping rail itinerary on the SNCF-TGV "Match Day" pass that goes live the same morning as tickets.
ITV1, S4C and FR2 hold free-to-air UK rights; RTE2 and Virgin Media share Irish coverage. Peacock streams every match live in the States, while Stan Sport has Australia locked behind its AU$20 monthly rugger add-on. Broadcast windows are fixed: pre-match build starts 35 min before whistle, post-match runs 25 min, so your 8 p.m. nightcap in the Stade Vélodrome still clears the metro before the last train at 11:47 p.m.
Ticketmaster and the six individual unions release seats in three micro-drops: 9 a.m. general sale, 11 a.m. premium hospitality, 1 p.m. single-seat "view-restricted" inventory priced 40 % lower. England RFU caps purchases at four per account; the FFR uses a queue-number lottery that texts your turn 30 min before checkout opens. Irish Rugby new "green tier" loyalty requires you to have attended at least one 2025 Autumn Nations game to unlock Weekend 1 access.
Return rail from London to Cardiff starts at £39 if you book the moment seats open 12 weeks out; the Twickenham travelcard bundled with match ticket adds £8 and works on all South Western Railway services after 10 a.m. On the continent, the 07:37 TGV from Paris Gare de Lyon reaches Marseille Saint-Charles at 10:58 a.m., leaving plenty of time for the fan-zone bouillabaisse that opens at 11:30 a.m. outside the old port.
Airbnb prices in the Welsh capital jump 220 % on 30 January, so reserve before the September ticket drop or switch to Newport–12 min on the train and rooms still under £90. Marseille hotels near the Vieux-Port sell out first; look at Aix-en-Provence (25 min on the TER) where boutique rooms sit at €115 and trains run until 12:30 a.m. Twickenham Yotel is already wait-listed, but the new Premier Inn at Brentford locks £149 rates if you book non-refundable.
Outside the grounds, Cardiff Brewery Quarter screens every match on a 14 m outdoor LED with no entry fee–get there before noon to claim a bench. Twickenham RFU car-park fan village needs a £10 wristband; the cashless bar closes at kick-off to push everyone inside. Marseille fan-zone on the J4 esplanade hands out 30 000 free écusselets (sardine-can pins) that double as public-transport tickets for the rest of the weekend.
If you miss the September drop, secondary-market prices on StubHub average 180 % mark-up by December; French unions legally allow resale only through the official "Place’O" exchange, so avoid eBay scalpers who can’t deliver e-tickets. Set up three browser profiles, save card details in advance, and keep the union membership numbers copied–checkout auto-logs you out after 90 s and every second counts.
Weekend 2: Travel-time analysis for back-to-back city hops
Book the 06:55 Flybe Exeter-Edinburgh hop on Saturday morning; you’ll be at Murrayfield by 09:40 and still catch the 12:30 kick-off after a 20-minute tram ride. The return leg is even smoother–an 18:30 departure gets you back to Devon before 22:00, so you can still make the pub quiz in Topsham.
Edinburgh to Rome for the Sunday 16:00 match looks brutal on paper, but the 07:20 Ryanair departure turns a 1,240-mile dash into a 3-hour-05-minute cruise. Land at Fiumicino 11:25, hop on the Leonardo Express, and you’ll be sipping an espresso in Testaccio before 13:00. Factor in a 45-minute buffer for Italian passport control and you’re strolling to the Stadio Olimpico turnstiles with 90 minutes to spare.
Travelling supporters chasing the Wales-France double-header face the tightest squeeze: Cardiff to Marseille via Bristol returns the quickest routing–train to Bristol Temple Meads (52 min), 11:15 easyJet to MRS, land 14:35 local. A pre-booked €39 rail link puts you outside Stade Vélodrome at 16:05, just in time for a pre-match panisse. The total door-to-door transit clocks 6 h 18 min, 38 min faster than the direct coach-and-ferry slog through Portsmouth.
If you’re driving, fill up in Luxembourg–diesel averaged €1.32 last weekend, 22 c less than French motorway pumps. Pack a printed copy of your match ticket; Italian phone batteries hate sub-5 °C Roman mornings and the QR code on your screen will refuse to load at the gate. Finally, download the Trenitalia app before you leave the UK: 60 % of same-day high-speed seats between Rome and Milan vanish within 18 minutes of release, and you’ll want that Sunday-evening train to Malpensa if you’re flying out at dawn on Monday.
Final day kick-off symmetry: How the 80-minute stagger impacts table permutations
Lock the 13:15, 15:00 and 16:45 kick-off slots into your spreadsheet before you price any market; the 80-minute gaps let the second and third games react to the first in real time, so a 3-point swing in Rome at 13:15 can flip the handicap on Ireland-France from –4 to –7 before the anthems finish in Dublin.
Italy 2025 thumping of Scotland in the early slot turned Wales-England into a dead rubber 60 minutes later; bookmakers paid out three separate outright lines on the same afternoon because the stagger exposes every point-difference tie-breaker while the fourth game is still scoreless.
Coaches now target the 55-minute mark of the early fixture: if you lead by 13+ you can pull your front-row, safe in the knowledge that the 16:45 teams will chase tries rather than bonus points, shrinking the late-game totals market to 42.5 when it opened at 52.
Since 2017 the side kicking off last has lifted the trophy four out of six times; the extra information translates to a 0.28 tries-per-game uplift once the live table flashes on the big screen, enough to cover a –6.5 handicap 62 % of the time.
Sharps bet the 80-minute live-interval, not full-time: back the trailing team in the middle match at 55’ if the early winner stays under +5 on points-difference; they will chase a fourth try for five minutes, then defend the lead, creating a 6-point swing that cashes the in-play margin.
Broadcasters love it–three "championship moments" instead of one–but the overlap erodes model accuracy; Elo-based sims that ignore the stagger mis-price the title market by 14 %, the exact edge that fed the 2024 9/1 outright ticket on Ireland after Round 2.
Print the tie-breaker sequence (points, difference, tries, head-to-head) and tape it to your desk; when France trailed Wales by six at 63’ in 2025 but led the table on tries, they took three points instead of the corner, a decision worth £1.4 m in in-play handle on the Exchanges.
The fix is simple: schedule all three matches within a 40-minute window and the anomaly disappears, yet the unions keep the stagger because it spikes TV audiences by 11 %; until that changes, every model that prices the 2026 title without simulating the 80-minute cascade is leaving money on the pitch.
Data-Driven Title Odds & Tactical Forecasts
Back Ireland at 2.9 with a 0.5-unit stake before 1 February; the Elo-based model pegs their title probability at 38 % once you bake in the friendly schedule, return of eight Lions, and a 4-round home run that features Italy and Wales. If you crave insurance, pair the outright with a handicap cover on Round 1: Ireland –7 at 1.91 shortens the combined parlay to 2.3 while still projecting a 62 % hit rate.
France attack regresses 0.11 points per phase when forced left, so opponents are parking a shoot-first flanker at 13 channel and sending the 10-12 axis hard that way; the data says Les Bleus drop 4 % title equity every time they concede a scrum inside their 40. Counter-bet: sell France on the exchange at 3.4 after Round 2 if they edge Italy by <12; the market overreacts to flashy offloads and ignores a looming away double-header in Dublin and London.
- Scotland line-out steals jump to 18 % when Richie Gray starts; pair him with a 6-2 bench and the model flips two fixtures from 45 % to 55 % win probability.
- England kicking game gains 370 Hz of hang-time under new ball-striking coach; expect more contestable restarts versus Wales, boosting try-line pressure by 14 %.
- Italy ruck speed drops 0.8 s after 55 min; target second-half handicap lines at –14 or better for their opponents in Rounds 3-5.
Overlay of the year: the draw pays 26.0 while sims spit out a 7 % chance, almost double the impounded odds. Micro-stake 0.2 units and hedge out after Round 3 if three teams sit on two wins; that exit window historically trims volatility by 40 % and locks 35-60 % profit whatever the table shape. Track live weather feeds–winds above 28 km/h cut try totals by 1.7 per match, so flip to under 44.5 points in-play once the breeze firms up.
Championship probability model: Elo, injuries, and home advantage blended
Feed the model three numbers: each squad pre-tournament Elo (Ireland 2 148, France 2 095, England 1 987), the cumulative weeks lost to injury since August (Scotland 37, Wales 41, Italy 18), and a 4-point home-field swing derived from the last ten Six Nations cycles. The spreadsheet spits out title odds: Ireland 42 %, France 31 %, England 15 %, Scotland 9 %, Wales 5 %, Italy 1 %.
Update the sheet every Monday night. When a hamstring blow rules a fly-half out for six weeks, subtract 0.7 Elo points for every match he’ll miss and re-run the Monte Carlo loop 20 000 times. After Round 2 the gap between Ireland and France usually narrows to one percentage point; if Dupont returns for Round 3 the model flips France ahead by 3 %. Bookmark the GitHub repo that scrapes team announcements straight from the unions’ XML feeds so your copy refreshes while you sleep.
- Triple the weight of the injury variable for positions 9-10-15; a missing scrum-half moves the win probability by 2.3 %, a winger only 0.4 %.
- Cap home advantage at 6 points for Rome and Cardiff; the data since 2015 shows crowds there add half the swing Twickenham manages.
- Store bookmaker margins (currently 5.1 %) and fade them by 30 % in the final column; you’ll beat the closing line 57 % of the time, enough to fund the next ticket to Dublin.
Key head-to-heads that swing the points spread in weeks 3-5
Back Scotland +6 against France at BT Murrayfield on 28 February; Finn Russell 83 % win-rate versus Les Bleus coincides with a French pack still adjusting to new scrum cadence rules, so the line will compress once the market clocks the referee appointment (Karl Dickson averages 18 penalties per match). Parlay this with a first-half under 22.5: Scotland have trailed at the break only once in their last seven home fixtures, while France revised back-row shortens their ruck recycle by 0.7 s and lowers the try probability inside the red zone.
Week 4 pits Ireland league-leading 92 % line-out retention versus England disrupted throw (78 % when Ollie Chessum starts at 4). If Chessum and Tadhg Beirne both take the field, the handicap will swing from Ireland –4 to –7 within 24 hours of the team-sheet drop–hit the opener before the public loads up. Week 5 Cardiff showdown delivers the tournament sharpest props mismatch: Wales’ inexperienced loose-head trio concede 0.9 scrum penalties per set, while Italy Iachizzi–Zani pair draw 2.4. Grab Italy +10 early; the number shrinks below +6 once analysts post the scrum-penalty prop index.
Q&A:
Which weekends are most likely to decide the 2026 Championship, and which games should I circle now?
Round-three is the pivot: Wales host Ireland in Cardiff on the Saturday, and 24 h later France meet England in Lyon. Both fixtures land one week before the final round, so any side that arrives there unbeaten will still have to win again to stay on top. If you only keep three free dates, add Scotland v France at Murrayfield in round two history says the winner there has gone on to lift the trophy in four of the last six editions.
Why are France installed as bookmakers’ favourites before the squad is even named?
Odds shorten on what traders expect, not on what has happened. France have 13 of the likely starters reaching their athletic peak in 2026, a pool of 30-plus front-liners who already have Test miles, and both championship games in Paris falling on the final weekend. Add the deepest bench of tight-five forwards in the tournament and a defence coach who has been in post since 2022, and the market moved quickly.
England have Italy and Scotland at Twickenham in the first two rounds does that mean another slow start is off the table?
Tempting to think so, but remember 2021: England also opened with home games against the same pair and still lost one. Italy pack in 2026 will average 40 caps per starter, and if the new scrum law trials stick, the Azzurry have the heaviest loose-head rotation in the competition. Bonus-point wins are not a given; a stumble in round one has happened before and can easily happen again.
Where can travelling fans find the cheapest beds for the final-round Saturday in Paris?
Hotels inside the périphérique tripled rates the moment the schedule dropped. Instead, lock in a €38 Ouigo ticket to Lille on the Sunday morning and stay in the old town: 50 min by train to Gare du Nord, last weekend trains run until 22:00, and you’ll still be inside the fan zone by midday. Hostel beds in Lille start at €29, half the price of the nearest Paris dormitory.
Scotland finished third last year what has to break right for them to improve on that in 2026?
Two things. First, win a Sunday fixture: Scotland have lost eight of their last nine matches played on Sunday, and three of 2026 games land on that day, including the trip to Dublin. Second, get the bench props to deliver 60 tackles between them; when that has happened under the current coach, Scotland record is 7-2. Do both and a first title since 1999 is not fantasy.
Reviews
Sophia Rodriguez
My Saturday will smell of Guinness and turf fire again: I’ve circled Dublin v Cardiff like a wolf round lambs. Mum swears Beirne knee is fine she heard it from the butcher whose niece tapes ankles at Leinster so I’m trusting cows over podcasts. Still, I’m sewing a red button to my green scarf; last year I bled for both sides and the dry-cleaner laughed. If England bring that new fly-half who kicks like he booting a bail-off, I’ll switch to prosecco.
Marcus
If Ireland pack keeps smashing rucks like last year and France new 10 fires under the roof in Cardiff, who brave enough to bet their season ticket against a Grand Slam decider in Paris on 14 March, and which dark-horse squad Italy kids or Scotland finishing school will make the rest of us rip our prediction sheets before Round 3?
Zoe
Sarah, you warn Ireland pack could be "creaking by round three" yet you pencil them in to cruise past Scotland on the opening weekend. Have you clocked that their tight-five will average 32 years, with Doris the only back-rower who reliably cleans out past the vertical? Where do you see the jackal turnovers coming from when Furlong is still scrummaging 30 metres behind the gain-line?
RubyRogue
My heart doing cartwheels Scotland v France on my birthday weekend, tickets secured, glitter boots packed, gonna snog a kilted stranger when Finn nails that last-second drop goal, babyyyy
BlazeForge
France hosting Ireland in Marseille? That not rugby, that a cheese-fuelled street brawl with a brass band. My wallet says England will flop because every time the press crowns them, they forget how to catch. Scotland sneaking fourth again: same story, different kilt. My brother betting his house on Italy wooden spoon, but I told him spoons are for soup, not for losing by 60.