Editing Playoffs (section)

==== National Provincial Championship ====
In the [[2006 Air New Zealand Cup]], the first season of the revamped domestic structure in that country, the top six teams after Round One of the competition automatically qualified for the finals, officially known as Round Three. Their relative seeding was determined by their standings at the end of the Top Six phase of Round Two. The teams that finished below the top six entered repechage pools in Round Two, with the winner of each pool taking up one of the final two finals slots. The seventh seed was the repechage winner with the better record, and the eighth seed was the other repechage winner.

From [[2007 Air New Zealand Cup|2007]] onward, the former Rounds One and Two were collapsed into a single pool phase of play in which all teams participated. In 2007 and [[2008 Air New Zealand Cup|2008]], the top eight teams advanced to the playoffs; in what was intended to be the final season of the Air New Zealand Cup format in [[2009 Air New Zealand Cup|2009]], the Shaughnessy format was used, with the top four advancing to the finals. The [[New Zealand Rugby Union]] (NZRU) ultimately decided to stay with the previous format for the rebranded [[2010 ITM Cup]], with the same four-team playoff as in 2009. Starting in [[2011 ITM Cup|2011]], the NZRU split the ITM Cup into two seven-team leagues, the top-level Premiership and second-level Championship, and instituted promotion and relegation in the ITM Cup (a feature of the country's former [[National Provincial Championship (1976–2005)|National Provincial Championship]]). The competition was renamed the Mitre 10 Cup in 2016.

The playoffs in each season format have consisted of a single-elimination tournament. The teams are bracketed in the normal fashion, with the higher seed receiving home-field advantage. In 2007 and 2008, the playoff was rebracketed after the quarterfinals, with the highest surviving seed hosting the lowest surviving seed and the second-highest surviving seed hosting the third surviving seed. The winners of these semifinals qualify for the Cup Final (2006–10) or Premiership/Championship Final (2011–), held at the home ground of the higher surviving seed. From 2011 onward, the winner of the Championship Final is promoted to the Premiership, replacing that league's bottom team.

Because the 2011 season ran up against that year's [[2011 Rugby World Cup|Rugby World Cup]] in New Zealand, the competition window was truncated, with only the top two teams in each division advancing to the final match. The Shaughnessy finals series returned to both divisions in 2012, and is currently used in non-World Cup years.