Your Sharks will find out who they’ll be facing in the pool stage of the 2025/26 Investec Champions Cup when the draw takes place in Dublin tomorrow (Tuesday 1st July).
The draw, streamed live on epcrugby.com from the Premier Sports studios, will start at 1.30pm and will see Alex Sanderson’s side placed in one of four pools of six.
In last season’s competition the pool stage saw the lads head to Glasgow and Cape Town, while French giants Racing 92 and Toulon visited the Salford Stadium.
Your Sharks finished third in pool four but then fell short in a titanic clash against Toulouse in the last 16.
So…what will tomorrow bring? Here’s how the draw works:
- The 24 Investec Champions Cup clubs which have qualified on merit from the TOP 14, Gallagher Premiership and United Rugby Championship (URC) will once again compete in four pools of six – Pool 1, Pool 2, Pool 3 and Pool 4.
- Each pool of six will contain two clubs from each of the leagues.
- Clubs from the same URC Shield cannot be in the same pool. Therefore, the Irish qualifiers – Munster Rugby and Leinster Rugby – will each be drawn or allocated into separate pools, and similarly, the Vodacom Bulls, DHL Stormers and Hollywoodbets Sharks from South Africa cannot be in the same pool.
- There will be no matches between clubs from the same league, so in order to create the pool stage fixtures, each club will play four matches against four different clubs who are not from the same league either home or away.
- For the purposes of the draw, the clubs will be divided into two tiers, Tier 1 and Tier 2. The four clubs in Tier 1 will be: Union Bordeaux Bègles (2025 Investec Champions Cup winners), Bath Rugby (2025 Gallagher Premiership winners), Leinster Rugby (2025 URC winners), and the TOP 14 winners. If Union Bordeaux Bègles win the TOP 14 title, then the Investec Champions Cup final runners-up, Northampton Saints, will be included in Tier 1.
- To start the process, the four Tier 1 clubs will be drawn with the first club out of the drum going into Pool 1, the second club out of the drum going into Pool 2, the third club out of the drum going into Pool 3 and the fourth club out of the drum going into Pool 4.
- Adhering to the key principles, the remaining 20 clubs in Tier 2 will then be drawn or allocated into the pools. If a club cannot be drawn into a pool in accordance with the key principles, then the club will be allocated to the next available pool. The process will then re-start at the pool into which the initial club could not be drawn.
