Rugby Premier League 2026 Returns to Hyderabad With Women's Competition Added to Second Edition

Indian rugby is gearing up for one of its biggest months of the year, with the second edition of the HSBC Rugby Premier League kicking off at the Gachibowli Stadium in Hyderabad from June 16 to 28, and the energy building around the tournament in the days leading up to the first match suggests that everything the inaugural edition started in Mumbai last year is growing into something significantly larger.

The Rugby Premier League runs in the Rugby 7s format, which means seven players per side, fast-paced matches, and the kind of end-to-end action that makes the format one of the most watchable versions of rugby for fans who are coming to the sport for the first time, and the tournament features six city-based franchises like Chennai Bulls, Delhi Redz, Mumbai Dreamers, Kolkata Banga Tigers, Bengaluru and Srinagar competing across a structured league and knockout format over thirteen days in Hyderabad.

The 2026 edition introduces a women's competition for the first time, with Chennai Bulls, Delhi Redz, Mumbai Dreamers and Kolkata Banga Tigers all fielding women's teams alongside the men's competition, making this the first time the RPL has run both men's and women's tournaments simultaneously. Rahul Bose, President of Rugby India, speaking about the player quality this season said the most exciting thing for any rugby fan is the quality of rugby being played, which depends entirely on the quality of players, and that there is tremendous flexibility in the format allowing players to really give their all, while coaches can rotate, select and mix and match to create a very exciting challenge.

Bose has been clear about the philosophy driving the RPL forward, saying the quest with everything done in life is to always do better, be better and deliver better, and that this will continue to be the cornerstone of everything the RPL stands for. He added that Rugby India will always strive to deliver a better product for fans, do better by sponsors, and be better partners for franchises, their owners and their support staff.

Sportscapefeels that Rahul Bose building the RPL from scratch as both a former international rugby player and a Bollywood actor who understood how to create an audience is one of Indian sport's more unusual success stories, and the addition of a women's competition in just the second year of the league's existence shows the ambition behind the project goes well beyond just putting on a tournament the goal is clearly to build a full rugby ecosystem in a country where cricket takes up most of the oxygen in the room, and the Hyderabad edition is the next step in finding out just how far that ambition can actually go.