The Scottish Varsity
Rugby union fixture
The Scottish Varsity is an annual rugby union fixture between the University of St Andrews and the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. In the Men's match, as of 2026, St Andrews have eight victories which leads Edinburgh's seven since the revival of the match in 2011. First played in the 1860s, it is the oldest varsity match in the world in a code of football.
History
Edinburgh University RFC was founded in 1857 and the University of St Andrews Rugby Football Club the following year. Fixtures began in the 1860s, making this the oldest varsity match in the world in a code of football.
In 1873, the University of St Andrews RFC and the Edinburgh University RFC, along with six other clubs, were foundering members of the Scottish Football Union (now, Scottish Rugby Union). Edinburgh University had joined the Rugby Football Union in 1871 and renounced their membership to join the SFU.
The Scottish Varsity was resurrected in 2011 after a hiatus of over 50 years and was staged in London at the home of London Scottish RFC in order to build alumni relations. In 2015, the match returned to Scotland in Murrayfield Stadium and drew a crowd of over 10,000 spectators. In 2021, the match was played at University Park, the home of University of St Andrews RFC, due to Covid-19 pandemic crowd restrictions. The match is normally held in late September and has received coverage from Sky Sports, the BBC and IRB’s Total Rugby.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q21997677. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2026, 2011, 1857 and 1873.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Scottish Varsity” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.