What changed in the calculation?
Rating points added to the home team for calculation purposes.
No home adjustment in the ranking calculation.
What changed
World Rugby’s revised rankings criteria removed the home weighting from 1 July 2026. The change applies to the calculation used to exchange ranking points; it does not claim that playing at home has no effect on a rugby match.
For a reader, the distinction is practical. A ranking is the output of a defined model. When a rule changes, comparisons made under the former rule need to be identified as such. We should not keep describing the removed home adjustment as part of the current calculation.
The model and the match
A stadium record and a ranking rule answer different questions. Our six-ground analysis describes observed home and visiting results since 2010. The rankings policy defines how results alter a global table. One cannot be substituted for the other.
Removing the home weighting does not erase Eden Park’s history, establish equal conditions in every fixture, or prove that travel has no influence. Those would be new claims requiring separate analysis. The rule change is narrower and more concrete.
How we cover it
This is an explanatory brief in our 20 October launch edition, not a claim that the change happened today. The effective date stays alongside the story. For the operative wording, consult World Rugby’s published criteria linked below.
As the portal grows, ranking analysis will need to preserve the rule version behind each calculation. We are not publishing a reconstructed live ranking calculator in this edition. The useful first step is making the change and its date clear.
Sources & methodology · 1 reference
This story draws on our dated research edition. Figures are factual aggregates; prose and visualisations are original. Follow the source links to inspect the underlying reporting.
Read our methods