| Most recent season or competition: 2023 France Sevens | |
| Sport | Rugby sevens |
|---|---|
| First season | 1995 |
| No. of teams | 16 |
| Most recent champion | |
| Most titles | |
TheFrance Sevens, also called theParis Sevens, is an annual internationalrugby sevens tournament that is one of ten competitions on the annualWorld Rugby Sevens Series. The France Sevens is generally held in May or June on the weekend following theLondon Sevens and is the last competition in the Sevens Series. France has also hosted tournaments within the EuropeanSevens Grand Prix Series, often atLyon.
France hosted its first International Sevens tournament atMelun, in the outskirts of Paris, in May 1995.
The 16 team tournament, culminated in a repeat of the pool game betweenEngland andFrance.
Winners of the previous day’s clash, a very strong England side captained byRob Kitchen, took the lead with two tries by player of the tournamentGerry Ainscough, both of which he converted.
Captained byAlain Penaud and including a number of other players with full caps, France recovered and snatched a 21 - 14 victory in the dying minutes of a very high quality game.
From 1996 to 1999 the tournament was known as the Air France Sevens, and in the year 2000 it was part of the inaugural IRB Sevens World Series.
The IRB hosted the tournament atBordeaux in 2004, before returning to Paris for2005 and2006. The event was effectively replaced in the World Sevens Series by theScotland Sevens at Edinburgh for the2006-07 season.
Between 2011 and 2015, Lyon hosted a leg of the European circuit, theSevens Grand Prix Series.
The Sevens World Series returned to France for the 2015-16 season, with the revival of the Paris Sevens tournament in 2016.
| Year | Venue | Cup final | Placings | Refs | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Winner | Score | Runner-up | Plate | Bowl | Shield | |||
| 1996 | Sébastien Charléty Paris | Fiji | 38–19 | France | Romania | Russia | n/a | [1][2] |
| 1997 | Sébastien Charléty Paris | Fiji | 13–7 | New Zealand | French Barbarians | Germany | n/a | |
| 1998 | Sébastien Charléty Paris | Australia | 33–26 | New Zealand | South American | Japan | n/a | [2][6] |
| 1999 | Sébastien Charléty Paris | New Zealand | 36–26 | France | French Barbarians | Australia | n/a | [7] |
In most years since 2011, France has hosted a leg of theSevens Grand Prix Series, a multi-leg competition sponsored by Rugby Europe every summer involving teams from Europe.
| Year | Venue | Cup final | Placings | Refs | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lyon Sevens | Winner | Score | Runner-up | Third | Fourth | Fifth | ||
| 2011 | Matmut Stadium Lyon | England | 28–14 | Spain | France | Portugal | Russia | [19] |
| 2012 | Matmut Stadium Lyon | England | 26–14 | Portugal | Spain | Wales | Russia | [20] |
| 2013 | Matmut Stadium Lyon | England | 33–5 | Russia | France | Wales | Portugal | [21] |
| 2014 | Matmut Stadium Lyon | France | 40–10 | Belgium | Spain | Russia | n/a | [22] |
| 2015 | Matmut Stadium Lyon | France | 20–7 | Spain | Belgium | Germany | England | [23] |
| 2016 | No Grand Prix Series event hosted in France for 2016 | |||||||
| 2017 | Gabriel Montpied Clermont | Ireland | 17–14 | Russia | Spain | Germany | Wales | [24] |
| 2018 | Marcoussis | Ireland | 49–7 | Germany | England | Russia | Portugal | [25] |