Some predictions for 2026. Yes Pogačar is there, but inside the crystal ball there are foolhardy glimpses of sprinting, TV coverage, scandal and even bidons for the year ahead.
Tadej Pogačar will win his fifth Tour de France. Obvious, dull and safe and if this blog was chasing hits it’s not an opening to provoke outrange or intrigue. But it is the central question in the sport. Given Pogačar has won four five seems within range. His biggest rival is Jonas Vingegaard who has opted to do the Giro as a reset, and were he to win the maglia rosa he could well find some liberation from this but could equally be sapped by UAE for trying. Such certainty today of course means plenty can chip away at these assumptions in the coming months.
Lidl-Trek will finish the season as the second best team. UAE will top the rankings – take your pick for wins, UCI points or even vibes – but the newly-branded German team will be runners-up and having finished narrowly third on the UCI tables last year behind UAE and Visma-LAB they’ll open up a gap on the rest and could even push UAE, in part because Pogačar is racing less and so should score less too. Lidl-Trek is arguably a more complete team than UAE as they have multiple contenders for the classics and a world class house sprinter and should pull ahead of Visma-LAB, especially as the Dutch team has now lost Olav Kooij, Cian Uijtdebroeks and Simon Yates. The mystery is whether Red Bull can find their wings.
Congestion could be an issue at UAE and Lidl-Trek with top riders not always getting the chances they want. The Giro looks spicy for UAE. Juan Ayuso’s move last autumn between these teams even signalled to many they can shred their contract, “pass Go” on their way to a new team where they can pick their race program. But there won’t be any contract-breaking soap operas this season. Loyal readers will know the Paradox of Long Contracts where the longer deals get, the more likely they are to get broken. All these forces exist but it just feels like 2026 could be an exception. Think of the “musical chairs” party game, there’s been a lot of riders dancing to the point but now there are few chairs left, as in not many teams need to raid rivals for talent now.
Budget caps will become a live topic this season but don’t expect them to come into force. It’s been an idea for a while but one that might break cover into something more concrete. There’s always been a big discrepancy between teams in the World Tour; 20 years ago CSC kicked sand in the faces of Euskaltel and Française des Jeux. But now the way arguably two thirds of teams in the World Tour look uncompetitive is striking, reduced to fighting over the crumbs that fall from the table. The remedy? Good luck. Theoretically even the top teams stand to gain if the sport becomes more sporting but in a tragedy of commons scenario the top teams probably won’t vote for this, plus those with ambitions to grow may reject it too. Even if the UCI could make it happen it’s fraught with difficulties and technicalities, the big teams, star riders and agents would have already hired lawyers and accountants to quietly game the rules. One solution to mitigate some of the structural gaps is a central licencing location where, say, French teams with high payroll taxes at home could change jurisdiction to Switzerland while they could do this today – Soudal-QuickStep seems so Belgian but legally it’s a Luxembourg team – having the UCI instigate this soon would supply political cover for a move in the future.
You’ll look forward to bunch sprints a little bit more. One domain where UAE won’t win everything is bunch sprinting. House sprinter Juan Molano has averaged 2.5 wins a year since joining the team in 2019 so imagine how the team would fare if they hired someone capable of winning ten or more sprints a season, all on the caveat that they might not get much of a lead out at all but they’d be paid like a king? But we’re not there and also there’s no undisputed sprint king either, they can go the way of Tim Merlier, Jonathan Milan, Matthew Brennan, Olav Kooij Jasper Philipsen with others capable too. So far, so salivating but one problem is the thrill of the final kilometre means the entirety of the course to get there is predictable, and probably more than ever as teams hunting for wins can’t afford to miss. So tune in, but just for the finish.
A coin toss and the international TV rights to the Giro and the rest of RCS’s portfolio get renewed by Warner-Discovery-Eurosport. As mentioned recently here the existing deal has expired and sale of the rights has been given to Iris Media and they are closely linked to the UK-Saudi streaming website DAZN, a venture with a record of over-promising and under-delivering (here, here, here). But how much is RCS’s portfolio worth? Not much frankly and still probably worth more to Eurosport than DAZN, which would not only have to stream the image but set up production. This could be an entry point for DAZN but the Saudi connection’s dried up given the One Cycling project has stalled. It could go either way and if the coin toss guess sounds flippant, well Strade Bianche is just over 40 days away and there’s no news on how people can watch it, commentators prepping notes for the Giro are waiting and more.
Safety will remain a blame game. Fields that prize safety like civil aviation, IT or deepwater diving go a long way to establishing a culture where there are fail-safes, backups and above all a willingness to learn from accidents. Pro cycling has commendably implemented many safety enhancing features in recent years, think weather protocols, five kilometre rules, tramadol bans and more but these tweaks can only mitigate the obvious dangers of hundreds of cyclists in light clothing racing on open roads, all while speeds have increased. Culturally it’s still coming up short. Last year there were two pilot two safety measures, one to reduce the maximum gear ratio and the other over location transponders and both were aborted because of politics, not even a test could happen. So if there’s a serious accident especially involving a celebrity name, expect a circular firing squad and finger-pointing rather than handshaking.
Financial scandal erupts. Nothing systematic but one the consequences of the lack of doping scandals is that money is pouring in with corporates reassured they won’t be the new Festina. As rider pay soars so do the temptations to hold onto it. We already see riders opting for cramped studio apartments in Monaco to live somewhere with no income tax, or take more spacious accommodation in Andorra – sleet and 2°C this morning – with its low 10% rate. But some have partners or agents renting villas the Côte d’Azur hills, others can be regularly spotted training around Girona. Cyclists have been busted for this already but it’s easier than ever for tax authorities. Riders are papped by Instagram users, while Strava, Garmin and Wahoo log precise location data, as does WADA’s Whereabouts system and if they have privacy limits, tax inspectors have investigatory powers too.
The Vuelta a España runs normally. Dog bites man normality, sure but last year the Israel-PremierTech team attracted large protests with some by the road thinking the team was backed by the country and the Vuelta needs to get back to being a bike race rather than a political event. Now the team is rebranded as NSN and while it retains many connections to the backers of IPT, it’s visibly and audibly different and that should suffice, plus Gaza isn’t in our headlines and feeds as much. The sport is vulnerable to protest because it is run outdoors and it’s impossible to secure the whole route. The UAE team could be questioned about Darfur but as we’ll explore in a separate blog post soon, this won’t worry them much; anti-Americanism could be on the rise in Europe given recent events but the EF team would be an unlikely target. Ineos doesn’t have the notoriety and the Total Energies team feels too small to attract climate change protesters despite its big backer.
Assuming the paragraph above holds then the Vuelta a España is the best grand tour of the season. As strong as João Almeida is, Jonas Vingegaard ought to cruise the Giro but could still be sapped by the UAE team which means Tadej Pogačar should win his fifth Tour de France. This leaves the Vuelta more open, especially as neither Vingegaard nor Pogačar are down to race the Vuelta.
The women’s Tour de France is better than ever. The men’s Tour is still a highlight of the season: the best riders in peak form racing across France in summer, it’s hard to top and the daily stage battles are like a world championships every day. But the race is often defined by the contest for the yellow jersey and right now this looks settled in advance. By contrast the women’s race looks open and a good blend of stages means riders with overall ambitions can’t stake all their chips on Mont Ventoux. It got bumper audiences in France last year and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot’s fame should bring out more crowds too.
Journalist Daniel Friebe wrote in his predictions that “One fairly major WorldTour team will run into life-threatening financial difficulty. I have an idea who but won’t say just yet”. You might be wondering which one but here the response was “just one?” Plenty of teams have issues for survival and last summer’s list can be reworked, for example Ag2r did stop sponsoring but the team’s secure thanks to Decathlon and CMA CGM but others could be added to the list. It circles back to the dominance question with teams and their sponsors having to spend ever greater sums just to stand still and some of those who came on board a few years ago may decide they’ve done their time during the course of 2026 but this could be valid next year and beyond.
Staying with financial gloom the Total Energies team ends. This is one call where it would be great to be wrong but the title sponsor has switched to become a co-sponsor Ineos and the remaining deal with the plucky French second tier team runs out at the end of this season. And there’s no news on a replacement so the squad that joined the pro ranks in 2000 may halt. The best time to find a new sponsor was yesterday, the second best time is now and talk of racing to get results is an alarm bell as it puts the onus on the riders and means nobody is interested now. There’s little time left. Current riders like Jordan Jegat, Emilien Jeannière, Mathieu Burgeaudeau, Thomas Gachignard and Anthony Turgis will be targetted by other teams in the coming weeks and months and the longer the wait, the more riders who can leave will which leaves the remaining team less appealing in case any sponsor is interested, a vicious spiral. There is one big hope why it can continue in that it’s got a de facto Tour de France invite. Having a sufficiently competitive team, a French flag and the lack of rival contenders for this spot means it’s a potentially attractive venture. But it’s not as easy as paying €15 million for Your Name Here title sponsorship, new backers have to buy into the team’s identity and define a new project.
On the tech-side a new Dura-Ace groupset from Shimano is due for release this summer. Reprising something from the Christmas Quiz is that many stock team bikes can now weigh under 6.8kg so we might see the UCI’s minimum weight limit become an issue, or at least some “UCI illegal” marketing from brands.
Talking of revisiting blog posts, a year ago there was a suggestion that with more and more carbs being used that teams could move to bigger bidons so they can carry more fuel. It didn’t happen but having read the follow-up review of 2025’s predictions a member of staff from one team emailed to say they’d tested just this but the riders were anxious about the weight penalty, both while riding but also as picking up heavy bottles at speed increased the risk of dropping them. So if regular size is here to stay, how about insulated bidons in use more? Normally they’re cheap plastic and treated as disposable. Thermos-style ones might seem extravagant to throw away at passing fans but there could be real gains when it’s very hot, at least the kind teams might pay €10-15 a time for.