2025 Asia Rugby Championship
The 2025 Asia Rugby Championship is the ninth annual rugby union series for Asia Rugby. The tournament features Hong Kong, South Korea, and the United Arab Emirates, with Sri Lanka returning for the first time since 2014 following their Championship playoff victory against the fourth placed team from 2024, Malaysia. Malaysia joins the other Asian nations played in the lower-tier division tournaments.
Background and format
The format of the series is a single play-off match, followed by a single round-robin where the four remaining teams play each other once. The team finishing on top of the standings at the end of the series is declared the winner. The team finishing at the bottom of the standing are relegated. The competition will begin on 13 June 2025 and will conclude on 5 July 2025.Hong Kong enter the competition as reigning champions, having won the competition for the fifth time in 2024.
The competition doubles as the final stage of the Asian continental qualifier for the 2027 Men's Rugby World Cup in Australia. The winner of the competition will qualify directly to the World Cup, where it will join Japan who qualified by placing in the 2023 Rugby World Cup, while the runner-up will enter a playoff against Africa 2, the runner-up from the 2025 Africa Cup for the chance to make the 2027 RWC Final Qualification Tournament.
Warm-up matches
Division 1/Championship play-off
- ''Malaysia were relegated to the Asia Rugby Championship Division 1.''
New Zealand U85kg tour of Sri Lanka
First test'''Second test'''