Salary cap: Toulouse’s advantage cut in half

The Ligue nationale de rugby published the details of the changes to its salary cap on 4 February. The rise in the cap dominated the commentary: 11 million euros from 2026-2027, then 100,000 more per season up to 11.3 million in 2029-2030. Below that line, a table in small print alters the balance of the league far more deeply. From 2027-2028, each additional international will earn his club less than the previous one, and beyond a certain number he will earn nothing at all.

What an international is worth today

The principle is long-standing and entirely linear. For each player on the France team’s Premium List, or selected twice in the 28-man squad during the previous Six Nations, the club’s cap is raised by 180,000 euros. The count is made on 1 July, based on the players in the squad.

The logic is one of compensation: a club that releases its key players to the national team loses them for several weeks, and pays their wages while they play elsewhere. Stade Toulousain’s cap is therefore not 10.7 million euros but 12.68 million, its eleven players on the list earning it 1.98 million of extra headroom.

You still need to know who is on that list. The league’s regulations, in Book 4 on administrative and economic regulation, define it unambiguously: the 45 players with the highest number of days released to the France team over the previous calendar year, with a 20% reduction for summer tour days. Not caps, nor minutes played, which are only used as tie-breakers. A player called up for an entire Six Nations and never picked is worth as much as an undisputed starter.

The scale, step by step

The league published the new scale as an image, without comment. Here it is, in thousands of euros, according to the number of eligible players at the club.

The gaps between the steps tell the story. A club’s first international earns it 210,000 euros. The second, 195,000. The third, 180,000. And so on, exactly 15,000 euros less each time. The fourteenth earns 15,000 euros. The fifteenth earns nothing.

The tipping point falls on the fifth player, and it falls precisely. Five internationals are worth 900,000 euros on the new scale, exactly five times the 180,000 euros of the current system. Below five, a club gains from the reform. Above, it loses, and the loss accelerates the more it accumulates.

What the reform would have changed last season

The fairest test is a retrospective one. The 2025-2026 season is over and its Premium List, published in December 2024, was reported by the regional press. So you simply keep the cap at its actual level of 10.7 million euros and change only the scale. The only variable that moves is the rule, which isolates its own effect without having to guess future squads.

That list included eleven Toulouse players, six at Bordeaux-Bègles, six at La Rochelle, six at Racing 92, four at Toulon, three each at Lyon, Pau and Clermont, two at Stade Français and one at Perpignan. Forty-five in total, the exact figure written into the regulations. Here are the effective caps each club would have had.

Six clubs gain, four lose, four stay put. And two ratios come out exactly. The gap in cap between the best-endowed club and those with no internationals shrinks from 1.98 to 1.485 million euros, exactly a quarter. Stade Toulousain’s lead over the three clubs behind them drops from 900,000 to 450,000 euros, exactly half.

The whole reform is in that right-hand column: a 495,000-euro cut for the French champions, redistributed in slices of 30,000 to 45,000 euros to six clubs. Bordeaux, La Rochelle and Racing lose 45,000 euros, a sum of no consequence for budgets of that size. Across the whole league, the LNR saves 390,000 euros in credits.

These amounts measure the effect of the scale on the published distribution; they are not the credits actually granted. Two rules set them apart. The credit is counted on 1 July based on the club’s actual squad, not on the list drawn up in December, so a player transferred in the meantime switches column. And the neutralisation period cancels some of them out, with a club receiving nothing for three seasons for an international who won his first cap elsewhere.

The calculation is also a floor: it only counts the 45 names on the list, whereas the credit also applies to players selected twice in the 28-man squad for the previous Six Nations. The real bill is therefore even heavier for the best-stocked clubs.

Eleven out of eleven

The credit follows the player, and is counted on 1 July each season based on the players in the squad. Yet a year and a half after this list was published, several of its entries have changed address.

Racing 92 lost four of their six players in two transfer windows: Gaël Fickou to Toulon, Nolann Le Garrec to La Rochelle, Thomas Laclayat to Pau, and Cameron Woki also gone. Stade Toulousain kept all eleven.

Asking the same question further back in time gives the same answer. Ranking the players most used by the France team over the 2023 calendar year, then comparing with the 2025-2026 list, five clubs out of twelve see their contingent shift by at least two players.

Montpellier drop to zero. Clermont start from zero. And amid all that upheaval, only one club stays the same.

That is the real lesson. For eleven clubs out of fourteen, the tapering scale is a detail next to the volatility of their own squad: Clermont gain 585,000 euros in credits in a single season without the reform having anything to do with it. For Stade Toulousain, whose contingent never changes, it is the only variable that moves, and it only moves downwards.

Thirteen clubs go up, one goes down

The French champions’ effective cap does not collapse: the 495,000-euro cut in credits is largely absorbed by the 600,000-euro rise in the cap. But the trajectory is reversed.

The season now starting is the high point: the cap has already risen by 300,000 euros and the tapering only comes into force in 2027-2028. The rest has to be read from that peak, because that is where a club manages its wage bill from. And from there, it goes down: 200,000 euros less in 2027-2028, 355,000 less in 2028-2029.

Stade Toulousain will therefore have to trim a third of a million euros from their wage bill in two years. With an unchanged international contingent, they are the only Top 14 club in that position. Between 2026-2027 and 2029-2030, clubs with six internationals gain 255,000 euros of headroom, those with three gain 345,000, those with none 300,000. Toulouse lose 195,000, and 255,000 once Ramos’s departure is taken into account.

The difference in trajectory compared with a club with three internationals reaches 600,000 euros over the period, roughly the salary of an established international. In four years, the others will be able to add a key player to their squad. Toulouse will have to lose one.

The safety net cushions less than before

A safeguard mechanism exists to stop a club’s credits collapsing from one season to the next. The reform raises it from 200,000 to 300,000 euros, and the measure has been widely presented as stronger protection.

It is the opposite. The threshold caps the permitted drop: at 200,000 euros, a club cannot lose more in a single season, however many internationals it has just lost. By raising it to 300,000 euros, the league allows a fall that is half as fast again. Montpellier, who no longer have anyone on the list, will see their credits run out 100,000 euros faster each season under the new system than under the old one.

The two bonuses nobody talks about

The regulations provide for two other items that the league’s press release passes over in silence.

The first rewards sevens. A club with at least one player on the Objectif 2028 List receives a 100,000-euro credit, provided one of those players takes part in every leg of the SuperSevens, final included. The text is careful to state that this scheme is standalone and has nothing to do with the Premium List.

The second concerns title bonuses. Sums that a club commits to paying for winning the Top 14, Champions Cup or Challenge Cup final are excluded from the salary cap calculation, up to a limit of 500,000 euros per club. Winning costs nothing against the cap, provided the bonuses have been declared to the Salary Cap Manager and entered in the accounts closed on 30 June.

Note that these credits apply to France only. A club that releases a South African for the Rugby Championship or a Georgian for the autumn tour loses its player just like everyone else, and receives nothing. Only the medical joker escapes this rule: article 3.4 refers to the national team that called up the player, whichever it may be, up to one player per season.

The clause that goes in 2027

The final layer, and the least visible. Today, a club that signs an international who made his first France matchday squad at his previous club receives no credit for him for three seasons. The regulations call this the neutralisation period.

It is producing real cases this summer. Reda Wardi won his first cap on 12 November 2022 as a La Rochelle player. By joining Montpellier, he earns no credit for his new club, which in any case no longer has anyone on the list. Georges-Henri Colombe, who made his first matchday squad on 10 March 2024, also with La Rochelle, has been in the same situation since arriving at Toulouse.

The exception is just as revealing. Cameron Woki won his first cap on 2 February 2020 with Bordeaux-Bègles. Having moved to Racing and then returned to Bordeaux, he escaped neutralisation, as the text expressly covers the case of a player who returns to the club where he won his first cap. Gaël Fickou, first matchday squad on 16 March 2013 with Toulouse, served his long ago: Toulon, whom he joined this summer, receive his credit without restriction.

But this clause disappears in 2027-2028. From that season, every player who meets the criteria will earn a credit for his club, without exception. The credit will stop rewarding player development and start rewarding ownership.

One reading of Ramos’s departure

Neither club has cited the salary cap, and nothing allows us to say it decided anything. The timeline, though, is tight. The league adopts the reform on 4 February 2026. The disciplinary committee fines Stade Toulousain 2.88 million euros in early July. The club confirms Thomas Ramos’s departure on 4 August. And that departure takes effect in 2027-2028, the first season of tapering, the very season in which neutralisation disappears.

Developed and capped at Toulouse, Ramos would have cost his new club a three-season wait under the current system. He will earn a credit straight away.

Then there is the arithmetic, which is even more telling. On 1 July 2027, Ramos leaves the Toulouse count and enters Racing’s. Under the current system, the operation is symmetrical: 180,000 euros lost on one side, 180,000 gained on the other. Under the new scale, it is not symmetrical at all.

The same player is worth twice as much at Racing as at Toulouse. He will be their seventh international, still well rewarded by the scale, whereas at Toulouse he is only the eleventh, the one whose credit has almost run out.

A club forced to cut its wage bill, a 32-year-old key player whose credit is no longer worth much, and a buyer for whom the same player is worth twice as much. The salary cap doesn’t explain everything about a transfer. It rarely explains one this well.

The French champions, for their part, will have lost the player, part of their credits, and already paid a 2.88-million-euro fine for breaching the cap.