\nStage 3 of Itzulia Basque Country was one of the team\u2019s finest wins of the
\nyear. Initially relegated for a supposed route infringement, he was reinstated
\nafter review<\/a> confirmed his line was legal. That moment proved Cofidis could
\nstill punch above their weight. Yet aside from that and February\u2019s hot streak,
\ntheir spring campaign fell flat. Against deeper squads, Cofidis looked
\nunderpowered and overworked, a team with effort but not execution.
![\"alexaranburu\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/alexaranburu-67fab928dfe98.jpg@webp.webp\")
<\/p>\nAlex Aranburu was one of the standout riders for Cofidis during the spring, but little more. @Sirotti<\/p>\n
Grand Tour season<\/p>\n
The Grand Tours exposed the full scale of Cofidis\u2019s decline.
\nAcross the Giro, Tour, and Vuelta, they failed to win a stage or place a rider
\nin the top 20 overall. Their combined points haul from all three races was less
\nthan some rivals earned in a single Tour.<\/p>\n
At the Giro d\u2019Italia, without a GC captain, the team focused
\non opportunistic racing. The Giro brought little. Sergio Samitier\u2019s 52nd overall
\nwas the team\u2019s top GC result, and most stage efforts ended short of contention.<\/p>\n
The Tour de France, though, offered no such consolation.
\nComing off their stage wins in 2022 and 2023, Cofidis entered confident but
\nleft empty-handed. Emanuel Buchmann was tasked with leading the GC effort; his
\n30th-place finish summed up the campaign, consistent, but never close. Coquard
\nbattled among the sprinters, managing a seventh place on one flat stage, which
\nwould stand as their best Tour result. Team insiders called the Tour \u201cdramatic,\u201d
\nnot for fireworks, but for the lack of them. A total of around 150 UCI points
\nfrom the race underscored the drought, and they were largely invisible.<\/p>\n
The Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a completed the trilogy of disappointment.
\nHerrada, a past stage winner, entered with hopes of redeeming the season, but
\nlingering injuries kept him below his usual level. Coquard opened with a
\nseventh on Stage 1 and never factored again. Samitier finished 31st overall,
\nand no Cofidis rider reached a stage top-five. The team\u2019s entire Vuelta haul
\nwas just 112 UCI points, and for the first time in years, they left Spain
\nwithout a win or serious headline.<\/p>\n
Cofidis\u2019s issues in the three-week races were structural.
\nLosing Guillaume Martin meant losing a reliable GC engine, and the replacements
\ncouldn\u2019t fill that void. Coquard\u2019s speed wasn\u2019t enough to outgun the elite
\nsprinters, and their breakaway artists lacked the finishing touch. Injuries further
\neroded depth. In the end, the Grand Tours exposed everything that went wrong in
\n2025: no leadership clarity, no decisive punch, and no luck when it mattered.<\/p>\n
Invisible is once again the best way to describe this sorry
\ndisplay for Cofidis in the grand tours.<\/p>\n
Transfers (2025\u20132026)<\/p>\n
After such a bruising year, Cofidis opted for a major
\nreshuffle heading into 2026. Key signings include Alex Kirsch from Lidl\u2013Trek,
\nwhose strength as a rouleur and lead-out man should help both the sprint and
\nclassics units. From the dissolved Ark\u00e9a team come Jenthe Biermans, a versatile
\nBelgian, and French climber Camille Charret, joined by U23 prospect Louis
\nRouland. The marquee new face is Italian U23 champion Edoardo Zamperini, a
\n22-year-old puncheur signed as a cornerstone of what the team calls a \u201cnew
\nera.\u201d<\/p>\n
Departures were just as significant. Jes\u00fas Herrada, a
\nstalwart and three-time Vuelta stage winner, leaves after seven seasons.
\nAnthony Perez, long a breakaway regular, is also out. Stefano Oldani departs
\nafter a quiet year, while Aim\u00e9 De Gendt joins Q36.5 and Jonathan Lastra moves
\nto Euskaltel-Euskadi.<\/p>\n
The management structure also changed. With the relegation
\nconfirmed, Cofidis parted ways with C\u00e9dric Vasseur, signaling a broader reset. As
\na ProTeam, Cofidis will still receive automatic wildcards to major races in
\n2026, ensuring continued exposure at cycling\u2019s highest level.<\/p>\n
![\"jesusherrada\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/jesusherrada-66c62d5ae342a.jpg@webp.webp\")
<\/p>\n
Jes\u00fas Herrada is leaving Cofidis at the end of this season. @Imago<\/p>\n
Final Verdict: 4\/10<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no sugarcoating it, 2025 was rough. The team began
\nbrightly, banked early wins, but the
\nseason\u2019s second half was defined by missed chances and mounting pressure. Grand
\nTours yielded zero victories and no GC relevance, and by autumn the points
\ndeficit had become irreversible.<\/p>\n
A fair score for the year is 4 out of 10: credit for early
\nsuccesses and isolated highlights, but marked down for Grand Tour anonymity and
\nan overall lack of punch. The mission for 2026 is straightforward. Reinforce
\nthe team\u2019s structure, protect key riders deeper into races, and develop the new
\ngeneration quickly. With automatic wildcards guaranteeing big-race access,
\nCofidis has the platform to rebound. Whether they can turn that into results
\ndepends on how fast the new signings settle and whether veterans like Coquard
\nand Aranburu can anchor the next chapter.<\/p>\n
Discussion<\/p>\n
Fin Major (CyclingUpToDate)<\/p>\n
Looking back, I can\u2019t help but feel Cofidis\u2019 2025 season was
\na harsh but necessary wake-up call. They started fast, looked sharp, and then
\nwatched it all unravel once the real tests arrived. The early wins and
\nMoniquet\u2019s Giro jersey reminded me there\u2019s still fight in this team, but the
\nGrand Tours exposed how far behind we\u2019d fallen. Losing WorldTour status will
\nreally damage them, there\u2019s no way around that. But, if Cofidis learns from
\nthis year, 2025\u2019s struggles might just be the foundation for something better.<\/p>\n
R\u00faben Silva (CyclingUpToDate) <\/p>\n
I am not going to go in on Cofidis, because it is a French team, one that I assume keeps the same budget year after year in a peloton that on average increases every year. In a way a team stuck in time, but no longer able to compete at this level, it simply doesn’t fit in the World Tour anymore and the relegation is logical. As pointed out, its 2023 season was quite decent and Victor Lafay was an absolute eye-catching breakthrough. 2025, I have one memory of Cofidis riding great and winning which was Aranburu’s victory at Itzulia. Nothing else, nada, the team was by far the most absent from the action this year, not only lacking the results but also any big name that would capture attention.<\/p>\n
If the context were to be ignored, you would have plenty to criticize. The team signed 13 riders, almost half of the entire team, and Aranburu is the only one who delivered. Emanuel Buchmann is no longer the same, Dylan Teuns was nowhere to be seen, and everyone else are riders who can perform in a more modest calendar, not in the same one as UAE and Visma. The money was invested in the wrong riders, and its lack of competitivness in the market seems apparent.<\/p>\n
Grand Tours, nothing to point out at all, none of the team’s climbers performed; in the sprinter field both Milan Fretin and Bryan Coquard had good starts to the season but after February they had 1 win in total; and there simply weren’t memorable moments. Little exposure, little results, the lack of UCI points was so severe that even with Ark\u00e9a disbanding and Intermarch\u00e9 disappearing from the scene (meaning two extra spots in the World Tour) the team didn’t make it. It was overtaken by Uno-X Mobility in the end, which until this year there probably wasn’t almost any focus or chances it would succeed. The team will go back to ProTeam level where it belongs (this isn’t criticism) and perhaps 2026 will be a better year. A Tour de France wildcard is virtually assured, and financial necessities perhaps smaller due to the lower division, so there won’t be too many issues with that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Spring Campaign Ironically, the year began as if Cofidis were ready to surprise everyone. In January, Coquard…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263930,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[109037,109038,109039,4985,263,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-263929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-alex-aranburu","tag-bryan-coquard","tag-cofidis","tag-cycling","tag-review","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}