Inside how Wigan Warriors' Paris trip with Catalans Dragons was devised with targeted attendance aired
Catalans Dragons owner Bernard Guasch admits their idea of taking a game to Paris has been on the table for a while, with the French club hoping for a sell-out crowd in their historic clash with Wigan Warriors.
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Catalans in Super League, the Dragons will relocate a ‘home’ Super League match to Paris to face reigning Super League champions Wigan on Saturday, June 6, 2026, at the Stade Jean Bouin, home of Stade Français and Paris FC.
"The idea has been on the table for a while, since around 2019, and then Covid held it back,” said Guasch.
"We’ve also got to try to fit in with the rugby union fixture list in Paris and find a suitable date, so it has been on the go for a while; it is not just something we’ve thought about within the last year.”
The game will be a repeat of the last relocated fixture by the Dragons, held in 2019 at the Camp Nou, where the Super League regular-season crowd attendance was broken with a 31,555-strong crowd.
The Super League, which will also be celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2026, will thus return to Paris – the place where it all began in 1996, when Paris Saint-Germain hosted Sheffield Eagles at Stade Charléty.
“It’s in our DNA to have big occasions in big stadiums, as we did in Barcelona,” Guasch added.
"Obviously, next year is the 30 years of Super League but also 20 years of the Dragons, and it’s also 30 years since PSG played their game against Sheffield in Paris, so it’s a big year for us and the Super League.
"Taking the game to Paris is a huge thing, a big city, a big sporting venue, is important to us, as is our long-standing history with Wigan.
"We’ve done some big games in some big stadiums against Wigan in the past, so equally as important as the occasion in Paris, is to play one of our favourite friends in the Super League in Wigan."
Guasch says the Dragons are hoping to put specific transport links in from the south of France up to Paris, with the hope of a sell-out crowd at the 19,904-capacity Stade Jean Bouin.
"The idea is to take the supporters from throughout France to Paris,” said Guasch. “We want to sell out the stadium, I think it’s 20,000, that’s our intention to do that, but we’re hoping to mobilise supporters from throughout France.
"We’re going to work with the SNCF (France’s state-owned railway operator), the British equivalent, to try to get trains heading up from the south with different carriages per village and for different towns, to try to pick up all the rugby league supporting populations in the south of France, east and west, to get up to Paris to have a big event.
"There’s traditionally been a lot of rugby league in Paris, and there still is in the suburbs up there.
"There’s also a big Catalan community and Catalan presence, so our idea is to mobilise all those communities in and around Paris, but to also put on a big show so we can speak about rugby league in France.”