The 2022–23 United Rugby Championship was the 22nd season of the professional rugby union competition United Rugby Championship. It began on 16 September 2022 and ended on 27 May 2023. For sponsorship reasons it was known in South Africa as Vodacom United Rugby Championship or Vodacom URC, while in the Northern Hemisphere it was known as the BKT United Rugby Championship or BKT URC.
The final which was held on 27 May 2023 was between defending champions the Stormers and Munster with Munster winning 19-14.
Format
The tournament consists of 21 rounds; 18 rounds of regular season play, followed by three rounds of play-offs.
There are four regional pools: The Irish Shield pool (featuring the four Irish teams), the Welsh Shield pool (featuring the four Welsh teams), the South African Shield pool (featuring the four South African teams) and the Scottish/Italian 'Azzurri/Blue' Shield pool (featuring the two Italian and two Scottish sides). The pools serve three functions; they guarantee a full slate of derby matches for each team, they are the primary route for qualification for the European Rugby Champions Cup, and they award a minor Regional Shield trophy to the top team in each pool, which thereby functions as a national championship in three of the four pools, and a cross-border regional championship in the Scottish-Italian pool.
Teams play six matches against their regional pool rivals home and away. The remaining twelve matches are made up by a single round robin, consisting of an even number of six home and six away matches against all the sides from the other pools.
For the Championship itself, there is only one main league table (the conference system used in previous Pro14 years has been dropped). The top eight sides in the table will qualify for the quarter finals, followed by semi-finals and a grand final, with teams seeded 1 to 4 with home advantage for the lowest seeded side. The Regional Shield pools have no direct link to the play-offs and by extension the Championship itself, and it is technically possible to win a Regional Shield but not contest the play-offs, as the Welsh sides showed in 2023.
A total of eight sides will qualify for the following season's European Rugby Champions Cup, but by a slightly different distribution method than the play-offs, while the remaining eight sides will qualify for the EPCR Challenge Cup. All points won in the competition contributed to rankings in the regional pools, with the top side in each regional pool automatically qualifying for the European Rugby Champions Cup. The remaining four places then go to (if not already qualified) the winners of the URC, the European Champions Cup and the European Challenge Cup, (if either or both of the European champions is a URC team that is not already qualified as URC Champion or URC Regional Shield winner) followed then by the highest ranked teams in the main table (who haven't already qualified by other means). A similar format was used to determine playoff contenders in the Super Rugby competition.
Teams
United Rugby Championship
Locations
Regional Pools and European qualification
The Regional pools of the regular season are the primary mechanism by which teams qualify for European competition, with the 'winner' of each regional pool guaranteed qualification for the European Rugby Champions Cup, ensuring at least one South African, one Welsh and one Irish side qualify for the premier European competition. As Scotland and Italy are sharing a single regional pool, at least one team from those two countries combined is also guaranteed entry, but neither country individually is so guaranteed. The remaining four places will be awarded to those with the four best overall regular season records, regardless of which pool they take part in. As such, it is possible that a team will qualify for the ERCC without reaching the URC play-offs by topping its pool, but finishing ninth or lower overall. If the club that wins the URC championship has not qualified for the Champions Cup on the above criteria, it will qualify instead of the last of the qualified teams that did not win its pool. The same will apply if a URC team wins the 2022-2023 Champions Cup or Challenge Cup and qualifies for the 2023-2024 Champions Cup without having qualified by its league position.
Priority order for European Champions Cup Qualification is therefore :