The title and the sweep.
27 CHAMPIONSHIPS · 2000–2026Filled years are Grand Slam campaigns. Select a year for its champion.
Champions without a Grand Slam.
A championship and a clean sweep
Thirteen of the 27 men’s Six Nations championships from 2000 to 2026 ended in a Grand Slam. France and Wales lead the sweep count with four each, Ireland have three and England have two. Scotland and Italy have none in this six-country period.
A Grand Slam requires winning every championship match. A title can be secured without that perfect record. The two columns therefore answer different questions: who finished as champion, and who did so without dropping a match? Change the chart’s measure to see how the comparison shifts.
The repeat that did not happen
No team completed consecutive Grand Slams within this 2000–2026 window. There were successful title defences after a sweep, but the perfect campaign itself did not repeat. The wording matters: defending a trophy and winning every match again are different achievements.
Wales in 2013, England in 2017 and Ireland in 2024 all retained the championship after a Grand Slam season. Each example makes the same distinction visible. A result table reduced to trophy winners would miss it; a list containing only Slams would miss the successful title defence.
Read the full timeline
The championship-by-championship view retains all 27 editions, including years without a sweep. Select a year to see its winner and whether it was a Grand Slam campaign. This prevents a sequence of famous unbeaten teams from becoming the only history on display.
France have eight titles in this window, England seven, and Wales and Ireland six each. Those title totals sum to 27. The sweep counts sum to 13. Keeping both checks visible helps stop a shared term such as “winner” from drifting between the tournament champion and the subset who won all their games.
The boundary at 2000
This story begins when Italy joined and the championship became the Six Nations. It does not rewrite the earlier Five Nations or Home Nations records. A team’s full historical total belongs to a different comparison with a longer window.
The competition has also changed during the period. A count of titles remains a count of titles, but it does not by itself compare difficulty, squad strength or playing style across eras. The timeline is a record of outcomes, rather than a ranking of which champion was best.
What perfection leaves behind
The absence of consecutive sweeps is interesting precisely because winning again remained possible. It separates sustained championship success from repeating a season with no dropped result. Both deserve their own language.
Use the title and Grand Slam views together, then select the years you remember. The country links connect those seasons with the wider portal, while the sources provide a route back to the championship record.
Sources & methodology · 2 references
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 methodsFollow the national jersey.
Explore the country records and related coverage behind the story.
Explore the teams