Bristol Bears are heading back to Cardiff in 2025/26A general view of The Principality Stadium, home of Welsh Rugby during the Gallagher Premiership Rugby match between Bristol Bears and Bath Rugby. (Photo by Bob Bradford – CameraSport via Getty Images)

Bristol Bears will play Harlequins, home and away, in two of the biggest stadiums in the country as the two Gallagher Prem teams take their rivalry to the next level.

On March 28, a week after the 2026 Six Nations concludes, the Bears will host the West London side at the Principality Stadium in The Big Day Out 2, having successfully dipped their toe into hosting a ‘big game’ in 2024/25 with a win against Bath at the home of Welsh rugby.

READ MORE: Bristol Bears’ 2025/26 Gallagher Prem fixtures in full

And on the weekend before Christmas, Harlequins will take on the Bears in their Big Game 17 at the Allianz Stadium, Twickenham, giving Bristol fans two epic days out during the regular 2025/26 season as Pat Lam’s side bid to reach the final for the first time in the professional era.

New Bristol CEO Tom Tainton told Bristol Live that the club plans to make their Cardiff showpiece event, which he confirmed is a substantial payday for the Bears, even bigger and better this season, with a vision of it becoming a yearly event.

He said: “The Principality Stadium were fantastic partners. What an incredible venue when the roof is on and actually when we reflect now and we’ve obviously done a lot of reviewing in-house, we feel like there’s also way more that we can do next year so it’s a little bit of a case of watch this space because if you thought that the first Big Day Out was good we’re going to pull out all the stops next time and with the double header on the cards with the women as well.”

Tainton continued: “We had 51,000 last year, we want to get more than that this time around. We want to really tap into that Welsh audience as we did last year. You’ve got two clubs that really want to play and two clubs that are sprinkled with stardust; it should be a hell of an occasion.”

The Bears have moved their Big Day Out from May to March with the hope that both teams will have everything to play for in the game this season, after Bath opted to send a second team to the Principality Stadium last season having already secured top spot in the table.

Tainton added: “Any team could be anywhere in that March 28th round and still have a shout of making into the top four. Now, we would hope and fully expect to be in and around that top four anyway and certainly Harlequins are just as capable of being in the mix. So I think what we can guarantee from that game is going to have jeopardy around it.”