Top 14: the great flush hunt!

The 2023-2028 Stadium Label guide, the document used to rate professional grounds, devotes four criteria to public toilets and two more to keeping them clean. Nothing is left to the club’s discretion, not even the soap dispenser. The LNR (the body that runs French professional rugby) is very precise in its wording: “points are awarded if every toilet block is equipped with soap and hand dryers”, states the “Men’s toilets” criterion. And squat toilets, it adds, “are not counted”.

A points-based label, on top of FFR approval

The LNR Stadium Label assessment specification has several tiers, bronze, silver and gold, and works on a points system. The LNR itself says the label complements the approval procedure of the FFR (French Rugby Federation), which sets the minimum conditions for hosting a professional match. Three sets of rules are therefore stacked on top of each other:

• the minimum regulatory requirements a stadium must meet to be approved for professional rugby;
• the LNR Stadium Label criteria, used to assess and improve the quality of the stadium;
• French legal obligations, in particular on disabled access, hygiene, safety and venues open to the public.

Cleaning staff on call on match day

The LNR also has a specific criterion on toilet maintenance during matches. The recommended level requires cleaning staff on call for the stadium toilets, physically present on match day: the club must be able to show that a cleaning service is booked for the duration of the event.

For the LNR, cleanliness must be maintained “from the moment the stadium opens until it closes”, not least because the toilets come under heavy pressure at half-time.

The LNR’s requirements and recommendations

These ratios do not apply to capacity but to headcounts: “per 1,000 men”, “per 1,000 women”. That means knowing how many women and how many men fill the stadium. Nobody counts them at the gate, and the LNR does not ask anyone to: it sets the split itself. “The spectator split is estimated as follows: 77% men, 23% women”, it writes, citing, under the VIP toilets criterion, a 2010 Kantar satisfaction survey of rugby spectators in France. Two lines higher, the men’s toilets criterion gives 75% and 25%. In a 20,000-seat stadium, the first split counts 4,600 women, the second 5,000, a difference of three toilets at the basic level.

One comparison is missing from the table: the one between stands. VIP toilets are set at “3 toilets and 2 washbasins per 200 men, 3 toilets, 2 washbasins per 200 women”, which works out at 15 toilets and 10 washbasins per 1,000 guests. In the general stands, the recommended level stops at 5 washbasins per 1,000 spectators.

19 November, a world day, and a theme that speaks to the stands

These ratios look trivial inside a stadium. They are not on a global scale: every 19 November since 2013, the United Nations has marked World Toilet Day, dedicated to sanitation. The UN points out that 3.4 billion people live without access to safely managed sanitation, according to 2025 WHO/UNICEF data.

The 2026 edition focuses on the link between sanitation and gender equality, under the slogan “Safe toilets: for an equal future”. The UN’s message is that access to safe toilets protects the health, safety and dignity of women and girls, and shapes their access to school, work and social life. Applied to a grandstand, that is exactly what the second row of the LNR table says.

An idea from football: free sanitary products at the Parc des Princes

Counting toilets and washbasins sets a baseline. What clubs then choose to put in their toilets is up to them, and football shows how far that can go. On 4 September, when Paris Saint-Germain hosted AS Monaco, female fans found new dispensers in the women’s toilets at the Parc des Princes: sanitary products are now free there, reports the outlet Ancré.

The Instagram post showing the dispensers at the Parc des Princes

The scheme lets female spectators get these products inside the ground, without having to plan ahead or leave the stands when they need them. The Paris club says it wants to improve the welcome and comfort of its female fans. It is not something the professional rugby specification has to rule on, but nothing stops a Top 14 ground from adopting it before 19 November.