2018 Super Rugby season

The 2018 Super Rugby season was the 23rd season of Super Rugby, an annual rugby union competition organised by SANZAAR between teams from Argentina, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Africa. After two seasons in which 18 teams participated, the 2018 season reverted to a 15-team competition, consisting of three geographical conferences.

The South African Rugby Union announced that the and  would be dropped for the 2018 season, while the Australian Rugby Union, now known as Rugby Australia, announced the exclusion of the. The South African franchises thereafter entered the newly renamed Pro14 competition, while the Western Force took part in the National Rugby Championship, the domestic Australia competition, while preparing to enter the new Global Rapid Rugby competition in 2019.

Competition format
The 15 participating teams are divided into three geographical conferences: the Australian Conference (consisting of four Australian teams and the Japanese ), the New Zealand Conference (consisting of five New Zealand teams), and the South African Conference (consisting of four South African teams and the from Argentina).

In the group stages, there are 19 rounds of matches, with each team playing 16 matches and having two rounds of byes, resulting in a total of 120 matches. Teams play eight inter-conference matches and eight cross-conference matches; they play all the other teams in their conference twice - once at home and once away - and play once against four of the teams in each of the other two conferences.

The top team in each of the three conferences qualify for the quarterfinals, as do the next five teams with the best records across the three conferences, known as wildcards. The conference winners and best wildcard team hosted the quarterfinals. The quarterfinal winners progressed to the semifinal, and the winners of the semifinals advanced to the final.

Round-by-round
The table below shows each team's progression throughout the season. For each round, their cumulative points total is shown with the overall log position in brackets:

Matches
The fixtures for the 2018 Super Rugby competition were released on 21 September 2017. The following matches were played during the regular season:

Finals
The finals fixtures were as follows:

Squads
The following 2018 Super Rugby squads have been named:

Top scorers
The top ten try and point scorers during the 2018 Super Rugby season are:

Referees
The following refereeing panel was appointed by SANZAAR for the 2018 Super Rugby season: