Auguste Albuisson

Auguste Albuisson played his first professional match in Belfast on 5 December 2025, against Ulster, aged 17 years and 270 days. No French player in the history of the professional game has been younger.

Flanker at Racing 92, 1.98m and 95kg, and 18 years old.

He started at the Rugby Club de Courbevoie and joined the Racing academy in 2021-22, in the under-16 grade. France have used him on youth tours to South Africa at under-17 and under-18 level, and his club made him captain of its junior side for the 2025-26 season. He was studying at the Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux at the time of his debut.

The record itself is worth being precise about. It is not a debut for a club short of players in a dead rubber. It came in the opening round of a European competition, away from home, against an Irish province.

Six weeks later he was given a start. Against the Cheetahs in the final pool match on 18 January 2026, he scored his first professional try inside the opening minutes and his club won 31-28. France called him into the under-20 squad that same month, ahead of the Six Nations, still short of his eighteenth birthday.

At 1.98m he is tall for a flanker and at 95kg there is a great deal of weight still to come. The question every player who does this at seventeen faces is whether the body catches up before the opportunity passes.

The youngest professional French rugby has produced, with a Top 14 career that has barely started.