Springboks Host the All Blacks at Ellis Park on August 22 to Open a Four-Test Tour That Replaces the Rugby Championship
New Zealand's first full tour of South Africa in roughly three decades brings four Tests across August and September, including a fourth in Baltimore, and has pushed the Rugby Championship out of the 2026 calendar entirely.
Southern hemisphere rugby has rearranged its whole winter for this. The All Blacks are in South Africa for an eight-match tour, and the first Test kicks off at Ellis Park in Johannesburg on Saturday 22 August.
Why there is no Rugby Championship this year
The 2026 Rugby Championship has been shelved. When the tour was confirmed in October 2025, the four-nation competition was moved out of the calendar and is scheduled to return in 2027, making it effectively biennial through this cycle. Argentina and Australia still meet South Africa and New Zealand in standalone Tests, but the annual round-robin is gone for a year.
The reasoning is straightforward: New Zealand had not toured South Africa properly in about thirty years, and both unions judged a full tour worth more than another edition of the same four-team league.
The schedule
The tour opened with provincial fixtures against the Stormers in Cape Town, the Sharks in Durban and the Bulls in Pretoria, with a Lions match at Ellis Park still to come. The Tests then run:
- 22 August — Ellis Park, Johannesburg
- 29 August — DHL Stadium, Cape Town
- 5 September — FNB Stadium, Johannesburg
- September — M&T Bank Stadium, Baltimore
The fourth Test in Baltimore is the outlier and the commercial point of the exercise: a Springboks-All Blacks fixture on neutral ground in the United States, two years out from a home Rugby World Cup cycle that both unions want an American audience for. A South Africa v New Zealand women's fixture is scheduled as a curtain-raiser at FNB Stadium on 5 September.
What a four-Test series changes
Two-Test windows reward whoever adapts fastest. Four Tests over four weekends reward depth, because the same players cannot front up at that intensity four times and the coaching staff that manages its bench rotation best usually finishes ahead. Altitude is the other variable — Ellis Park and FNB Stadium both sit on the Highveld, Cape Town is at sea level, and Baltimore is a long-haul trip at the end of a hard month.
South Africa go in as the reigning world champions and won the most recent meeting between the sides comfortably. Home advantage over three of the four Tests makes them the logical favourites for the series.
Following it on Playdash
Playdash covers every Test with match winner, handicap, total points and first try-scorer markets, plus a series-result outright that stays live between Tests. Pricing moves sharply on team announcements at this level, and the Baltimore Test is treated as a neutral-venue fixture rather than an away game.
Fixtures as confirmed through 19 August 2026; the fourth Test date has been listed differently by some sources.