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The 1940 Auckland Rugby League season was its 32nd.
Richmond Rovers won the Fox Memorial Shield for the 4th time after previously winning in 1934, 1935, and 1937. They finished the season with a 12 win, 1 draw, 3 loss record and were 3 points ahead of runner up North Shore Albions, with Mount Albert United in 3rd. Papakura struggled through much of the competition only managing 1 win. They, like many teams had lost playing members to the war effort and were unable to field a reserve grade side.
Richmond Rovers also won the Roope Rooster knockout competition when they beat Ponsonby United 31–7 in the final. Richmond had made the final by defeating a surprise Papakura side who had beaten Otahuhu Rovers and Manukau on their way to the semi-final. While Ponsonby had thrashed Mount Albert 41–13 in their semi final. After being knocked out of the Roope Rooster, Manukau managed to win the Phelan Shield knockout competition when they defeated Mount Albert 20–14 in the final.
In the Stormont Shield, champion of champions match North Shore Albions beat Richmond 15–10. North Shore had qualified for the match by virtue of the fact that they had finished runner up in the championship. Typically the match would be played between the winner of the championship and the winner of the Roope Rooster. But with Richmond winning both trophies the long standing rule was that the championship runner up would play in the match in that eventuality.
Richmond also won the reserve grade championship (Norton Cup) ahead of Mount Albert. There was very poor coverage of the reserve grade competition and as such a large number of results were not reported and towards the later part of the season match fixtures were not even being published in either The New Zealand Herald or the Auckland Star. The competition only featured seven of the eight 1st grade senior sides with Papakura not involved. Otahuhu Rovers won the Senior B championship (Sharman Cup) once again. This competition was also very poorly reported though most of Otahuhu's matches did at least have the score reported.
Owing to the war there were very few representative fixtures. The majority involved matches between Auckland (Tamaki) Māori and Pakehā sides with Auckland Māori playing one match at Davies Park in Huntly against South Auckland (Waikato). At the conclusion of the season a charity type fixture was played between the Auckland Veterans and the South Auckland veterans. Craddock Dufty kicked 5 conversions for the Auckland side in a 31–18 win.