2025 RFL Championship

The 2025 RFL Championship, (officially known as the Betfred Championship for sponsorship reasons), is a professional rugby league club competition. The second tier of the British rugby league system comprises 13 clubs – 12 from England and one from France.

The season comprised 26 rounds in the regular season with each team playing 24 fixtures and having two bye weeks. The top six teams took part in the play-offs to determine the champions. The Championship was won by Toulouse Olympique who finished second in the regular season behing League Leaders' Shield winners York Knights. The two met in the Grand Final on 5 October when Toulouse won 10–8.

Team changes

Wakefield Trinity won promotion to the Super League at the end of 2024 and were replaced by London Broncos who were relegated from Super League under the IMG grading system. Promoted from League One in 2024 were Oldham and Hunslet who replaced the 2024 relegated teams, Swinton Lions, Whitehaven and Dewsbury Rams.

Structure changes

There was no automatic promotion from the Championship to Super League at the end of the season. This is due to the IMG grading scheme where clubs are graded by a number of factors, not all based on on-field performance.

Following a review of the league structure below Super League, the RFL announced that by the start of the 2026 season, the Championship and League 1 would be equalised in size at 12 teams each. In March 2024 the RFL completed the review and announced that the first steps will be taken to equalise the number of teams in the Championship and League One at 12 each by the start of the 2026 season. Following the 2-up, 3-down system in 2024, 2025 would have see the return of the Super 8s format with the top four teams in League One meeting the bottom four teams in the Championship to decide which division those clubs will play in for 2026. However, following the decision to expand Super League from 12 to 14 clubs from 2026, the decision was taken on 27 August 2025 to merge the Championship and League One competitions for 2026. The Super 8s therefore became redundant and were cancelled.

Rule changes

Three rule changes are brought in for 2025:

• Kick chasers will only be offside if they are influencing the play rather than automatically being offside for being within 10 metres.
• Drop-outs that fail to travel 10 metres or go out on the full, result in a play-the-ball rather than a penalty.
• Attacking players as well as defending players can be green-carded if play has to be stopped due to an injury. Previously only defending players could be green-carded.

Clubs

Regular season

Results

Standings

Play-offs

Player statistics

Top 10 try scorers

Top 10 goal scorers

Top 10 points scorers

As of 5 October 2025: (Playoff final)

Discipline

Red cards

Yellow cards

As of 18 September 2025: (Round 24)

References