Carcassonne

Nationale is one tier removed from where Carcassonne had just been playing, and the club won it anyway, beating Chambéry 24–23 in 2025 to take the title and go straight back up to Pro D2. The promotion undid a relegation from the season before, when the side finished bottom of the division. Getting knocked down and climbing straight back inside a year is not the same as staying up, and that distinction runs through the club's history: honours tend to come in the second tier and below — a Fédérale 1 title in 2010, Fédérale 2 in 2008, Fédérale 3 in 1966 — while the top flight has produced one final, lost 5–0 to Perpignan in 1925, and a second-division championship in 1975.

The club traces back to 1899, the first civilian rugby club formed in the Aude department. It did not stay itself for long: a 1906 merger with Étoile Sportive Carcassonnaise produced Association Sportive Carcassonnaise and the black and yellow that the team still wears, and in 1938 the club left union rugby for league. Union returned in 1944, when that section split off again to re-form as US Carcassonne XV — the identity the club has carried since.

A training centre set up around 2009–2011 has been the club's way of building from within rather than buying its way up.

What still eludes Carcassonne is a French championship itself.