The boldest partnership in pro cycling history ends in 2025. Here’s how Rapha and EF Pro Cycling left a mark on cycling fashion in its seven-year collaboration.
(Photo: Rapha/EF Pro Cycling)
Updated October 7, 2025 04:05PM
Rapha and EF Pro Cycling have announced the end of their partnership, bringing seven years of what might be pro cycling’s most culturally significant sponsorhip to a close.
Most cycling apparel partnerships are fairly milquetoast, as the apparel sponsor brands consist of long-time apparel companies with designs that seem to emphasize sponsors over outright looks. Team kits were predictable, marketing campaigns (if there were any) were formulaic, and one logo could be swapped for another with little consequence. Pro cycling kits were traditional, but not these EF Rapha kits. No, they were different. They oozed cool.
The partnership between Rapha and EF Pro Cycling was quite a bit different right from the start. Bold colors, streetwear collaborations, and storytelling certainly drew the attention of both cyclists and non-cyclists alike. Over the seven-year partnership, the two came together to definitively make cycling kit cool, regardless of whether or not you were into pro cycling.
With that, here’s a history of Rapha and EF Pro Cycling’s partnership, why the sponsorship was so significant, and where we think pro cycling kit could go next.
From pink to Palace
A rare moment of Lachlan Morton in a road race, wearing an even rarer kit collaboration with Palace. (Photo: Tim de Waele/Getty Images)
The apparel sponsorship between the EF Pro Cycling WorldTour squad and Rapha started in 2019. Rapha may have been a relatively new apparel sponsor against the regular choices out there, but it wasn’t the British brand’s first sponsorship, as Rapha supplied Team Sky from 2013 to 2016. While those Team Sky kits coincided with success for both Team Sky and Rapha, it wasn’t until Rapha partnered with EF Pro Cycling that the kits truly began to hit their stride.
The partnership really made its mark with a 2020 Giro d’Italia collaboration with the skate brand Palace. It featured a truly divisive design, a riot of psychedelic graphics, cartoon ducks on time trial helmets, and a design language lifted straight from urban fashion and skate culture.
It was divisive, sure, but it was unforgettable.
A future world champ in a Palace Rapha kit collab. POC provided matching helmets. (Photo: Benedict Brink/EF Pro Cycling)
For the first time, a WorldTour kit was discussed on streetwear forums and covered by design magazines. The collaboration blurred the line between cycling apparel and pop culture.
The 2022 Tour de France Femmes capsule, celebrating the return of the women’s race, proved that the formula still worked. It was playful, purposeful, packed with meaning, and it was one of the few times a cycling fan could show a kit to someone not into bikes and have them think it was cool.
The Palace collaboration extended to some seriously good-looking bikes with Cannondale.
This fusion of skate style, high-performance textiles, and storytelling was something no other team or brand was doing. Rapha’s technical know-how gave the kits substance, but it was the shared vision with EF that gave them swagger.
The result was a team that felt human, irreverent, and accessible. For myself, someone who didn’t get into pro road cycling until recently, the showy, design-forward kits made me pay attention in a way I hadn’t prior.
Rapha and EF nailed the storytelling
(Photo: EF Pro Cycling // Dominique Powers)
The bright pink kits may have been the hook to bring people into the sport, but the storytelling was what kept people interested.
The Rapha produced “Gone Racing” documentary series, which ran from 2019 to 2022, delivered that in spades. It followed EF riders not just through the chaos of the WorldTour, but into gravel races, ultra-distance challenges, and wild personal adventures.
The so-called “Alternative Calendar” became a symbol of this broader ethos.
No rider has embodied that alternative calendar more than Lachlan Morton. He wasn’t just chasing stage wins; rather, Morton sought adventure, challenges, and rides that captured everyone’s desire to explore. Morton’s 2021 Alt Tour is an excellent example of it, as he rode the entire Tour de France route unsupported and beat the peloton to Paris by five days.
Morton and Alex Howes embraced the alternative calendar. (Photo: Jered Gruber & Ashley Gruber | Gruber Images)
EF Pro Cycling’s willingness to let riders explore events like Unbound Gravel and the Leadville Trail 100 MTB gave the team a unique connection to cycling’s grassroots. It made the sport feel open again, with a distinctive pink kit with a white Rapha band around the left arm to tie everything together.
What comes next for Rapha and EF Pro Cycling
EF Education-Nippo kit for the 2021 Giro d’Italia. (Photo: Rapha)
Both EF Pro Cycling and Rapha are fairly mum on what the next chapters for their respective brands might be.
In a press release, EF Pro Cycling CEO Jonathan Vaughters says the team wishes “Rapha all the best as they move onto new adventures. It’s an exciting time to be at EF Pro Cycling, and we can’t wait to keep building on one of our most successful seasons to date.”
We’d guess that much of the characteristic style and design that EF Pro Cycling has cultivated over the years will continue in its next partnership, though we have little insight into what brand that might be.
As for Rapha? It’s a bit more complicated. Rapha CEO Fran Miller doesn’t mince words here.
“Rapha is leaving the WorldTour – for now. We will be back. EF Pro Cycling has a unique spirit that we will always respect and champion. But we have made the decision to broaden our horizons and increase our impact across other progressive areas of elite and participation cycling. This does not mark the end of our support for the world’s most talented and charismatic riders. The next chapter begins now.”
EF riders have worn many variations of pink over the years. (Photo Dan King/Rapha)
The remaining domino to fall has to be Lachlan Morton, the adventure-centric pro caught in the crosshairs of the EF Pro Cycling and Rapha split. His presence has largely defined much of the non-pro-cycling adventure stories around both groups, pushing limits like breaking the fastest-known-time record riding around Australia, winning Unbound Gravel, and more.
Rapha couldn’t give us a firm response, only saying that Lachlan Morton is under contract with EF Pro Cycling for just one more year. Could Morton reunite with Rapha after that?
One last limited-edition collection
To commemorate the partnership’s close, Rapha and EF Pro Cycling have released three jerseys.
The ‘Crashed the Party’ Jersey is said to fuse the best-loved designs. Then there’s ‘Changed the Game’ Jersey, celebrating race victories. Finally, there’s ‘Back to Blackout’, a nod to the team’s understated 2019 debut. Each serves as both a memento and a farewell to an era that changed cycling’s visual and cultural landscape.
The Rapha-EF Pro Cycling Blackout Jersey. (Photo: Rapha)
The Rapha-EF Pro Cycling Celebration Jersey. (Photo: Rapha)
The Rapha-EF Pro Cycling Panache Jersey. (Photo: Rapha)