Worcester Warriors will re-enter professional English rugby at the start of the 2025/26 season, the club said today.
The Warriors will join the Championship – tier two, one below the Premiership.
Today’s news, announced at Worcester’s Sixways stadium, comes two years after the club went into administration.
“This is a fantastic day for the club,” said Warriors chief executive Stephen Vaughan.
“Our name, Worcester Warriors, may be the same but we’re a brand-new club. This is Worcester 2.0.
“This is a massive region which now has a rugby club to support again.”
Worcester’s re-entry into the upper echelons of the English game comes after the club – including all its debt liabilities – was taken over by Junction 6 Limited.
The new owners then agreed to a series of conditions including a “financial security guarantee” held by the RFU.
Premiership ambitions
Chris Holland, Warriors chairman, likened the financial stress-testing by the RFU to “three months at the dentist,” adding: “It’s been a detailed and challenging process.”
Holland said his long-term ambition for the club was to re-enter the Premiership, but only “when we can afford to do so.”
The RFU said Worcester’s new owners had already made “substantial payments” to administrators, and had agreed as part of the deal to enter the Championship that it would repay outstanding debts owed to the Department for Media, Culture and Sport (DCMS) and HMRC by the end of the year.
Holland said thorough financial plans had been laid.
“We will spend within our budget,” he said – the right words to say, especially with Simon Gillham, the RFU’s Tier 2 board chairman, and Conor O’Shea, RFU director of performance, beside him jointly briefing a gaggle of media.
NFL, football and rugby league at Sixways
Holland said plans to diversify the club’s revenue included ambitions to bring rugby league, football and NFL to Sixways.
Club owners faced a choice during the in-depth process to agree a deal for its re-entry into the pro game.
They could either have started at the bottom with perhaps a 10-year journey back to the upper levels of rugby – or agreed to own their creditor obligations and pay off their debts as part of an RFU agreement to join the Championship.
They chose the latter.
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