Vannes and the promoted side’s challenge

The 2026-2027 Top 14 gets under way on Saturday 5 September. Vannes return a year after dropping out and will be the season’s only promoted side: just one club went down in the spring, Montauban, and just one came up.

The 2026-2027 Top 14 gets under way on Saturday 5 September. Vannes return a year after dropping out and will be the season’s only promoted side: just one club went down in the spring, Montauban, and just one came up.

How Vannes came back

RCV did not sneak back up. In Pro D2, they finished the regular season with twenty-four wins, one draw and five defeats from thirty rounds, 116 league points, 1,092 points scored and 543 conceded. They then knocked out Oyonnax in the semi-final (48-7) before beating Provence Rugby in the final (18-14) on 6 June, at home.

The off-season followed the same logic. Thirteen players arrived, among them Argentina international lock Matias Alemanno from Gloucester, wing Ugo Boniface (Union Bordeaux-Bègles), scrum-half Nathanael Hulleu and fly-half Pierre Popelin (Castres), prop Sione Mafileo (Montauban) and several Pacific Islanders who have played for Moana Pasifika and the Fijian Drua.

The fixture list offers no favours: a trip to Castres in Round 1 on 5 September, then Montpellier at home on the 12th.

Sixteen survivals from thirty-three promotions

Le Télégramme pointed out on Monday that fewer than one promoted side in two has stayed up since the Top 14 was created in 2005-2006. Thirty-five clubs have come up to the top flight over that period. Two of those promotions, Bayonne and Brive in 2019-2020, fell in the season cut short by Covid: no one was relegated that year, and both promoted sides were kept on without the issue being settled on the pitch. They are therefore set aside here.

That leaves thirty-three promotions genuinely decided on sporting grounds. Sixteen ended in survival and seventeen in an immediate return to the division below, a survival rate of 48.5%. It gets tougher if you look only at the last eleven seasons excluding Covid: five survivals from fourteen promotions, or 35.7%.

What a second attempt changes

The raw figure hides a pattern: the clubs that stay up are rarely first-timers. La Rochelle went straight back down after promotion in 2010-2011, then established themselves from 2014-2015. Bayonne went up and down in 2016-2017 before holding on in 2022-2023. Perpignan dropped in 2018-2019 then survived in 2021-2022. Toulon, promoted in 2005-2006, went back down before returning in 2008-2009 and never leaving the top flight again.

Vannes fit that profile: a failed first spell, an immediate return, and experience as their main asset. That is the message from the club, which points to a deeper squad and a bigger budget.

What the first season showed

RCV’s 2024-2025 record was not that of a side outclassed across the board. Their 661 points scored put them ahead of Perpignan (469) and Stade Français (597). It was the defence that gave way: 891 points conceded, the heaviest total of the season.

Vannes are three weeks from their first game. The season will tell whether the second attempt follows the path of La Rochelle, Bayonne and Perpignan, or that of the seventeen promoted sides that went straight back down.