The Betfred Challenge Cup Finals Day returns to Wembley Stadium on Saturday 5 June 2027, with the men's and women's finals played on one afternoon.
The Challenge Cup was instituted in 1896, in the season after the northern clubs split from rugby union, and its first competition ran across 1896 and 1897. Its final was first staged at Wembley in 1929 and the stadium has been treated as its home ever since, which is why a sport with almost no southern clubs keeps one fixed day in London. Wigan Warriors have won it twenty-two times, more than any other club.
The competition is open to every eligible club down to the fifth tier, with amateur sides qualifying through the early rounds, so a works team and a full-time professional squad are in the same draw. The crowd that fills Wembley comes from the towns of the two finalists rather than from the capital, and it sings Abide with Me before the kick-off, which has been the anthem of the occasion for generations.
Finals Day 2027 is at Wembley Stadium on Saturday 5 June, with the women’s final and the men’s final played on the same afternoon. The women’s competition dates from 2012 and the wheelchair competition from 2015, and around seventy clubs enter across the three. It is the one day in the year when rugby league’s heartland comes to London in numbers, and the terraces are filled by two towns rather than by the city it is played in.