Women’s HSBC World Rugby Sevens Challenger Series 2020

World Rugby finally announced details for the Women’s HSBC World Rugby Sevens Challenger Series 2020. The 7s Challenger Series event will take place at the Danie Craven Stadium in Stellenbosch, South Africa from 28-29th March 2020.

The men’s series was already announced and is kicking off in February in South America.

Update: Tournament postponed

On March 14th, World Rugby postponed the Series:

Women’s HSBC World Rugby Sevens Challenger Series 2020

The women’s Challenger Series will be a standalone event with 12 teams competing. All of the national 7s rugby teams have qualified from World Rugby regions and a place as a core team on the HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series  2021 season is up for grabs.

World Rugby Chairman Sir Bill Beaumont said:  “World Rugby is heavily committed to growing the women’s game – the women’s competition on the HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series has expanded from six to eight rounds this season and teams are more competitive than ever, demonstrating the need and appetite for more women’s teams to be playing sevens at a high level with a clear pathway to progress to the very top of rugby sevens.”

Who will be playing?

There are 3 Asian nations (China, Japan, Kazakhstan) competing at the HSBC World Rugby Sevens Challenger Series 2020 in South Africa, and the 12 nations are:

• Argentina
• Belgium
• China
• Colombia
• Japan
• Kazakhstan
• Kenya
• Mexico
• Papua New Guinea
• Poland
• Scotland
• South Africa

The teams will be drawn into three pools of four teams. According to a press release from World Rugby, they said:

“The Sevens Challenger Series is a new competition designed to boost rugby sevens’ development across the globe. Today’s announcement is just the beginning for women’s participation on the Sevens Challenger Series, which will evolve to feature more rounds across the globe as it grows and develops in future years.”

As Scrumqueens pointed out, “this will effectively create “second division” of world sevens and should go some way to bridging the current huge gap between the teams in the World Series and the rest – a gap so vast that almost every team promoted to the top table of sevens has been instantly relegated again.”

Olympics 2020 Rugby 7s

A number of teams competing at the Series will also be competing at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020.  China and Kenya have already qualified while Argentina, Colombia, Kazakhstan, Mexico and Papua New Guinea all take part in the Olympic repechage in June 2020.

HSBC World Rugby Sevens Challenger Series 2020 details

• Venue: Danie Craven Stadium in Stellenbosch, South Africa
• Dates: 28-29th March 2020 *(new dates TBC, postponed due to coronavirus).

More Asian rugby news

• Korean men’s 7s team to play at HSBC LA Sevens 2020.
• World Rugby Men’s Sevens Challenger Series 2020 pools.
• 2020 Cathay Pacific/HSBC Hong Kong Sevens and the Singapore Sevens 2020.
• Read about the full HSBC World Rugby Sevens 2020 schedule.