The world’s biggest rugby photography competition has revealed its shortlist for the 2026 competition, with all finalists appearing in an exhibition at Allianz Stadium, Twickenham.

Two years is a long time in rugby, especially if you don’t win a match. But a club like Richmondshire RFC, built by a bear of a man called Alf, are made of sterner stuff and somehow found a way to find positives in defeat and even notch the occasional win. 

Captaincy, a century of England caps and his daughter Lydia all arrived soon after the passing of his beloved mum, but when Jamie George returns to his hometown club of Hertford, the echoes of her vociferous support still resonate.

Picking up glass from the park pitch before his first training session, Cai Griffiths knew this wasn’t the London Welsh he’d helped to the Premiership three years before. It literally wasn’t, it was the amateurs at level 9 who’d just finished mid-table, and he was tasked with returning this iconic rugby name back to the national leagues. Five promotions, no salaries, easy.

Even with a professional contract being offered, Alex Matthews didn’t want to sign it. She was questioning herself, her mindset, even her ability to pass and catch a rugby ball. But, she loved rugby. Really loved rugby. She just had to rediscover that love, then who knew what might happen next.

It’s been more than one thousand days since Sixways last hosted its beloved Worcester Warriors. But, amid the wreckage of a terrible era in Premiership history that saw three clubs disappear from view, Worcester have risen again. And Sixways has never known a night like it.

Christchurch High School was famed for producing All Blacks, and when Dan Carter arrived as a teenager he was overwhelmed by what he saw. So much so, he lost his love for the game, opting to avoid senior rugby and instead play with his mates. It could have meant the end of his rugby dreams, but instead it was the beginning.

She’s been world player of the year, a three-time domestic champion, seven-time Six Nations winner, and captained both club and country. But, without a World Cup win later this year, Zoe Stratford knows something will still be missing.

Mike Catt’s rugby career started when he got bored of backpacking around England and gave Bath a call, Gareth Chilcott answered. Then, an eventful career unfolded, taking in press hammerings, injuries, World Cup glory, a Lions Test and, of course, Jonah Lomu. 

A mercurial fly-half who faced the Lions in 1989, played The Varsity Match when it mattered, and was part of Harlequins in the star-studded Carling era, Kent Bray had an enviable rugby life. But off the field, as a trader, his cocaine addiction would spiral to thirty grams a week, leaving him on the edge of the abyss.

A journey that truly began when he decided to start ‘kicking shit out of public schoolboys’, ended as cult hero of the British & Irish Lions. Scorer of a famous Lions try, a Test starter in a South Africa series victory, a dual-code rugby professional, and the most famous cameraman of the late-1990s. This is John Bentley.

White Hart Lane might be more famous as the home of a certain football team, but its one and only rugby club is making its mark, genuinely reflecting the diversity of the London borough, to stand out in the best possible way.

On a 1970s Penguins tour of the Soviet Union, a destination too risky for England, where hotel rooms were bugged and receptions frosty, one man made a swift trade selling jeans to KGB agents. Maurice Colclough was unique, as memorable off the pitch, as he was on it.

In 1990, Debs, Sue, Mary and Alice decided that women should have their own Rugby World Cup. Against impossible odds, they delivered it in ten months. Netflix will tell you that dramatising rugby isn’t easy. Turns out they just chose the wrong story.

One game, two tries, but Joe Cokanasiga’s World Cup ended there. In truth, it ended the moment he got off the plane. His biggest challenge would then begin: surgery, rehab, piling on the pounds, playing, then injured again. At this point, he was done with rugby.

On the banks of the River Medway, a location so prized the Normans were quick to fortify it and the Germans wanted to bomb it, Tonbridge fights to be noticed in the heart of rural Kent. Its weapon of choice? Rugby.

After ending an eight-year wait for a world crown, and then proving their mettle with England A, the country’s golden generation is finally ready for the game’s biggest stage.

When Sam Matavesi signed up for the Navy at 24, rugby seemed part of his past. But a twist of fate took him from the deck to the world’s biggest rugby stage, reinvented, reunited with his brother, and even sharing the dressing room with Antoine Dupont. In the end, the Navy didn’t end his dream, it made it possible.

Before he donned the white of England, Semesa Rokoduguni wore the green of the Army. From Afghanistan to the Premiership, his story is one of service, sacrifice and gratitude, and now, of giving back to the uniform that shaped him.

Eight years after a Parkinson’s diagnosis that could have ended his coaching days, Lieutenant Colonel Tim Osman is still leading from the front, as the UKAF head coach rallies his side for a Remembrance clash with Germany that’s about far more than rugby.

“The four months between my dad dying and my mum passing away were so tough, she became really dependent on the alcohol to the point where she was basically sedentary. You try and intervene, but quite frankly you have to allow them to suffer in their own suffering.”

The 2001 British & Irish Lions were flush with world-class talent: Wilkinson, O’Driscoll, Wood, Johnson, Henson, Howley … and after winning the first Test, the script seemed written for a series win. But, driven by Brumbies, the hosts had other ideas, and at the heart of it was Stephen Larkham.

A founding member of the SAS; Britain’s most decorated war hero; and described by some as ‘completely mad’. Once, dressed in black tie, he shot a springbok and delivered it to his Presbyterian minister room-mate. As British & Irish Lions tourists go, Blair ‘Paddy’ Mayne might just be the greatest ever.

On the banks of the River Thames, at a school ground fit for a king, two of rugby’s famous names take to the field in a top-of-the-table clash. London Scottish Lions and London Irish Wild Geese in Regional 2 Thames might not have the glamour of matches past, but both could well represent the future.

From a Gareth Edwards jersey sold for £240k and one of Dave Gallaher’s fetching £180k, to a Subbuteo-style tactics board from 1950 and a bespoke picture of a weeping kangaroo, memorabilia linked to the British & Irish Lions can be a big, and intriguing, business. Just don’t call it merchandise.