two Conferences made up of ten teams each, based on their previous year rankings. Each conference is then split into two, North and South, where teams could change each year depending on the competing teams - nations closest to boundary moved from North to South and vice versa each season as necessary to geographically balance the conferences. Level 4 - Conference 2 Level 5 - Development. Replaces Division 3. A promotion and relegation play-off system is maintained across all levels every year, moving away from the two-year system in place since 2003, meaning teams will be promoted and relegated every year. The best two teams in the 2022 Rugby Europe Championship will qualify for the 2023 Rugby World Cup and the third team will qualify for its final qualification tournament in November 2022. In the event, and following a penalty to Spain for fielding an ineligible player, Georgia and Romania qualified directly from the championship, and Portugal, who qualified for the final qualifier, won that tournament to qualify for the World Cup. A statement was released by the Polish Rugby Union in December 2021 confirming that the Rugby Europe Championship, will expand to 8 teams in 2022/2023 season. To accommodate this expansion, no team will be relegated from the top tier, while two teams from the second tier Trophy Championship will be promoted following the completion of the 2021/2022 Championship. The serpentine system is applied to allocate each team to their respective groups. Each team will play a total of five games (three round robin group matches to detremine the team's path and two play-off matches). Seeding (for group) and relegation is calculated over a two year cycle, as is the promotion from Trophy competition. Addittionaly, Rugby Europe made changes to the bonus points system. The standard system, that is applied in the Six Nations Championship was discarded in favour of the French system. The main difference is that where previously a team would be awarded 1 try bonus point for scoring (at least) 4 tries, regardless of the outcome, and whereas now, a team would be awarded 1 "bonus" point for winning while scoring at least the equivalent of 3 or more tries than their opponent. International Championships: new format (from 2022) From October 2022, the Rugby Europe International Championships, made up of five levels or divisions: Level 1 - Championship. The top eight ranked European teams outside the