The league proper restarts on the weekend of 28 August, but Pro D2 2026-27 has already begun on the training pitches. And the gap is striking: depending on the club, pre-season varies by almost a factor of two.
A month between the extremes
The earliest risers pulled their boots back on as early as 22 June: Narbonne, Nevers and Soyaux-Angoulême are giving themselves more than nine weeks of preparation before the opening round. At the other end of the calendar, Provence Rugby do not return until 20 July, barely more than five weeks before the season kicks off. In between, the bulk of the field went back between late June and the first week of July, according to the schedule of all sixteen clubs compiled by Rugbyrama.
This spread is no accident of the calendar. The clubs that played in the spring play-offs gave their players longer holidays. At Oyonnax, who returned on Monday, manager Fabien Cibray owns the choice in Le Progrès: six weeks of pre-season this year against nine last season, the consequence of a campaign extended into the play-offs, but with, he says, sounder foundations in both game plan and cohesion.
The mountains, the training camp destination of choice
Another constant of the summer: altitude. Saint-Lary will be full with three clubs hosted in July (Biarritz, Nice and Soyaux-Angoulême), La Plagne will take two (Grenoble and Oyonnax), and the Pyrenees as a whole account for most of the team-building camps, from Arette to Loudenvielle by way of Hasparren.
Two clubs are the exception and have chosen to do without a camp altogether: Nevers and Valence-Romans, who will run their entire pre-season at home.
See you on 28 August
The warm-up matches will be spread across August before the opening round, scheduled for the weekend of the 28th. Between now and then, every coaching staff will have made a different bet: start early to bank the volume, or count on the freshness of a rested squad. The answer comes at the end of the summer.
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