York Knights and Toulouse Olympique have won the three-way battle to snare the final two places in next season’s expanded Super League, with the newly invigorated London Broncos missing the cut.
As Championship Grand Final winners, Toulouse occupied 13th place in the list of club gradings announced on Thursday, while York, as regular season winners, were rewarded for securing 14th. Nonetheless, with on-field performance only one criterion in the decision, made by a panel chaired by the Rugby Football League nonexecutive director Lord Caine, the Broncos will be disappointed to have lost out.
The 14-team lineup is now complete, with the former champions Bradford having already secured a return to the Super League for the first time in more than a decade in 2026 when it was announced they had jumped to 10th place in the IMG club gradings announced on Thursday.
Bradford replace Salford in next season’s top flight, with the top 12 clubs in the gradings automatically guaranteed Super League status. Bradford finished in a lowly 16th place in last year’s gradings but significant stadium improvements enabled them to improve by more than two points to 14.81, enough to lift them above the existing Super League clubs Castleford and Huddersfield, who ranked in 11th and 12th places respectively.
Salford, beset by a continuing financial crisis that left them unable to fulfil a fixture against Wakefield in August, plunged to 15th place and, with the club having failed to apply for consideration for one of the two prospective expansion places, their 17-year Super League stay is over.
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