List of international rugby union teams

The following is a list of international rugby union teams:

Other invitational sides past and present include:

The sport's international governing body, World Rugby (formerly the International Rugby Board), organises its member unions into three tiers. All Tier 1 and 2 nations have competed in the Rugby World Cup (RWC).

Development One :

Development Two:

Starting in 2008, in addition to the existing tier system, the IRB introduced a four-band system of classification in which unions and, by extension, teams are classified based on "their development status and record on the international stage". The new structure is:

All countries previously in Tiers 1 and 2.

These are countries earmarked for increased developmental funding and include

Again, the IRB did not release a list of unions in this category, but named several as being in this band:

This is the location for all remaining unions.

Various national sides have ceased to exist for political reasons. In the case of the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, there is more than one successor team. In the case of Catalonia, the Spanish Civil War and Franco's crackdown put an end to it, and in the case of East and West Germany, reunification led to their amalgamation into a single German side.

* For more information on these teams see above.

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