Antoine Dupont is now reported to be earning around £1.2 million a season at Stade Toulousain, a figure rugby publications place ahead of every other salary in professional rugby union.
The France scrum-half put his name to an extension that keeps him in Toulouse red and black until 2031, covering the next two Rugby World Cups. Toulouse never released the numbers itself.
What the club did confirm was the length.
“Antoine Dupont extends his adventure with Stade Toulousain until 2031. His contract extension symbolizes loyalty, passion and shared ambition.”
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The deal also carries a flexibility clause, reported by French outlet Dicodusport and picked up by Planet Rugby, that would allow him to pursue “another challenge” during its life, opening a door both to his Major League Rugby franchise Rugby FC Los Angeles, in which he holds a stake, and to France’s sevens team at the 2028 Olympics.
Ahead of Kolbe and Itoje at the top of the wage table
The reported wage would push Dupont clear of rugby’s other top earners. Ruck’s most recent tally put Tokyo Sungoliath’s Cheslin Kolbe at around £930,000 a season and Saracens lock Maro Itoje at roughly £800,000, with Itoje’s RFU contract lifting his total closer to £1 million.
No official quote from Toulouse ever confirmed £1.2m. The four-year extension itself is the only figure the club put its name to.
“You all know it was a boyhood dream to wear this shirt one day, it’s now my adulthood dream to continue the adventure here,” Dupont said when the extension was announced.
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Toulouse’s €2.88m salary cap bill
On 3 July the LNR disciplinary commission fined Toulouse €2.88 million for a series of Top 14 salary cap breaches across four seasons between 2021 and 2025, a record for the French league. The breakdown was €1.83 million for exceeding the cap, €1 million for transparency failures, and €50,000 for the revocation of an earlier suspended sanction.
The commission’s central finding centred on image-rights payments to France back-row Anthony Jelonch through a Toulouse sponsor, airport services company 3S-Alyzia. That mirrored the structure L’Equipe reported earlier this year as funnelling around €1.5 million to Dupont since 2017 via the same firm. Dupont has filed a defamation complaint against the newspaper.
His broader view of the LNR’s oversight has been on the record since last autumn, when he criticised the inclusion of commercial partnership payments inside the €10.7 million cap at a Toulouse sponsor event.
“It’s turning into a bit of a witch hunt where they want to expose the cheaters but it’s becoming ridiculous,” Dupont told reporters.
“We find ourselves in a growing rugby economy thanks to us, the players in the middle, and in the end we don’t benefit from it because salaries are stagnating or even falling.”
Signed through the next two World Cups
Under head coach Ugo Mola, Toulouse are the reigning Top 14 champions. Locking down Dupont for another five years, through a cap fight the club has now formally lost once, sets the ceiling for what the French domestic game is willing to pay to keep its biggest name at home. The next Top 14 season kicks off in early September, with Dupont having returned to France duty at the 2026 Six Nations opener following his knee reconstruction.
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