World Rugby Americas Pacific Challenge


The World Rugby Americas Pacific Challenge is a rugby union tournament that serves as a development competition for Americas and Pacific island nations. The competition has been hosted by the Uruguayan Rugby Union since 2016, with all games played in Montevideo.
The Americas Pacific Challenge was first contested in October 2016 by the national 'A' teams of Argentina, Canada, Fiji, Samoa, Uruguay and United States. Tonga took the place of the Fijian team for the 2017 competition, and retained that place in 2018.
The APC is funded by World Rugby. Prior to its creation, two teams from the Americas had played in the Pacific Challenge. This was reversed in 2016 with two Pacific Island teams joining the inaugural APC which effectively replaced the previous format of the Americas Rugby Championship. The tournament serves as a venue for developing and preparing players for participation with their senior national teams during international tests, and in the Rugby World Cup qualification cycle.

Format

The Americas Pacific Challenge uses a split pool format wherein the six competing teams are divided into two pools of three. Each team plays one match against each of the teams in the opposite pool. The tournament's winner is decided based upon the number of points accumulated from each match.

Teams

Current teams

There are six teams that compete in the Americas Pacific Challenge:

Past team