A closer look at the UCI World Tour promotion and relegation contest for the men.
If you’re in a hurry, or to save you a click, XDS-Astana have jumped up the rankings and halved the gap to Cofidis in their quest to remain in World Tour but Dutch team Picnic-PostNL ought to be as worried as the French team.
Plus while Lotto look set to qualify for the World Tour on points we have to ask if they have the budget next year to sustain this because if not then they’re in a predicament.
Rule recap
Teams are ranked on the basis of the points haul for 2023, 2024 and 2025 combined which is itself based on tally of the 20 best scorers on each team. The top-18 teams qualify for the World Tour.
Any WorldTeams in 19th place or below are relegated to ProTeam status. Teams in this second tier are invited to participate in the top events. More detail in The 2025 Points Race.
The Rankings today
The red line is below 18th place and so teams above qualify for the World Tour in 2026-2028, below means relegation:
Relegation zoom chart
This is the same chart as the one above but cropped to zoom in on the relegation contest:
So far this season
This shows the weekly scores, you can see XDS-Astana on the up and also the gap still to close.
Promotion, I
For some time the promotion of Israel-PremierTech and Lotto has been treated as a formality because they’re so far ahead on points, they look bound to be in the top-18 teams by the end of the season. But let’s step back from squinting at the spreadsheets and glancing at the graphs because last week Lotto scored zero points. This doesn’t help the points tally of course but the point is the team is avoiding racing. If it doesn’t want to do a World Tour calendar now, who is to say it wants promotion next year? Or more pertinently can it afford promotion?
It’s lost a co-sponsor and so is having to cut back on racing to save costs but this is marginal, wages typically take up 70% of a team’s budget so saving on fuel, autostrada tolls and not hiring soigneurs on temporary contracts for a week is almost symbolic for the budget. All this while rival teams are getting the pre-classics stage races that are considered essential. So if Lotto don’t get a co-sponsor who says they’re promoted anyway? They can apply but might find the UCI says their budget is insufficient; it’s elective and so they can turn it down because the obligation to have a bigger roster, to do all the grand tours and more is beyond them. If they were not to make the World Tour then, everything else being equal, there would be 17 WorldTeams and so five invited teams to the grand tours, of which Lotto would hope to feature.
Automatic invitations
If there are 18 World Tour teams next year then two teams stand to get automatic invitations to the grand tours based on the 2025 rankings alone. Right now it’s XDS-Astana at the top with the Swiss pair of Tudor (1,798 points) and Q36.5 (1,656), with Uno-X in fourth place by only a 15 points. But do we assume Astana stay manage to stay in the World Tour?
Lotto are well down on 654 points for 2025, currently below Burgos-Burpellet-BH so relegation could be costly for them as they’d risk being frozen out of invitations to top races next year.
Relegation, I
XDS-Astana are relegation candidates but continue to rise up the ranks. This week marks a significant moment as they’re now in 19th place, having jumped up two places. They’re still 2,486 points behind Cofidis which is a lot. But they started the season in 21st place and 4,720 points so they’ve almost halved the gap and it’s not even the end of March.
Relegation, II
Arkéa-B&B Hotels look doomed. They looked like this at the start of the season given the poor tally of points that saw them start in 19th place and 2,400 points short of 18th place and the exodus of riders over winter. Now they’re further adrift. It’s not certain the team continues either, management are trying to secure sponsorship renewals or replacements.
Ideally the team continues as a strong ProTeam but it’s not certain and the jeopardy of relegation is all on display here. Sponsors may not want to back a team that may not ride the Tour de France next year; riders will not want to stay or join either.
Relegation, III
Cofidis sit in 19th place so the closest threat for relegation. But they’re only 190 points behind Picnic-PostNL as the Dutch team is stalling. You can look at Picnic’s roster and see quality but we’ve said this for the last two seasons and they didn’t score, plus they have injury issues with Max Poole among those out and every rider counts now. The two teams will be watching each other closely as XDS-Astana closes in.
Relegation, IV
We should also watch Intermarché-Wanty as the team sits on a cushion of points from 2023+2024 but is faring badly this year and if this continues – and they are very reliant on Biniam Girmay – then they’ll be worried about the late season too.
Woe is Jayco!
They’re safe… for now. It was much more worrying last time in 2022. The hope for them is to shine (and score) with the likes of Groenewegen, O’Connor, Plapp, Dunbar etc but they have and have had some injuries so far this season, already the Giro is looking a concern, is there enough time for Plapp to be back to his best? etc
Groenewegen is probably past it, O’Connor is looking brittle, Plapp runs out of steam in the final … but perhaps Dunbar can do one of those long attacks to the finish again!
The winter had a lot of riders shuffling to different teams. TBH, getting caught up on who’s riding with which team and getting familiar with the new kits is making it challenging to track what’s happening in some of the races I’ve watched :).
But, any thoughts on how those changes might affect opportunities to score points? UNO-X is looking very good right now and Q36.5 had a reasonable showing in T-A.
OR, could this be teams that are doing really well right now are focusing on classics in the hopes of building a points cushion for expected weaker showings in the grand tours?
Q36.5 signing Pidcock has changed plenty, as has his form and results so far.
Several teams have been in the “we don’t have to be WorldTeams, we can save on the roster and race where we want” club and the related “relegation wouldn’t be the end of the world, we’ll still get invites” club but now we see the risks of this. Q36.5 has overtaken Lotto, Uno-X and Cofidis so far this season so the one year rankings this year count.
I’m finding the PRT competition more interesting than the world tour. Tudor figuring at the front of nearly every race, yet Q36.5 appear from nowhere and have overtaken them in the standings.
I fear that Intermarche are in the weakest position of those teams above the red line.
When you look at their roster, it’s hard to see where any meaningful wins & points come from, outside of Girmay – if he has a dry year, then their points haul could be woeful.
Girmay got a third of their points last year so they’re reliant on him. Girmay is really crucial because he can score in the big moments, eg 2nd on Omloop and the GP Québec, 5th in the Ronde while his team mate like Rex, Mikhels, Thijssen etc should be scoring elsewhere but none of them are yet.
> Lotto are well down on 654 points, currently below Burgos-Burpellet-BH so relegation could be costly for them
Be nice to show a 2025 chart here. Also, be good to add “for just this year” after “on 654 points” – easy to forget the 2025 qualification from the paragraph prior and get confused (“Wait, I thought the first chart showed Lotto well up in the rankins?”).
Fixed the text to help a bit here.
The 2025 rankings are here:
https://dataride.uci.ch/iframe/RankingDetails/238?disciplineId=10&groupId=1&momentId=189422&disciplineSeasonId=444&rankingTypeId=2&categoryId=22&raceTypeId=0
Perfect, thanks 🙂
Is more that if Lotto choose not to take their WT spot, then their performance (as it stands) this year means they won’t get this invites to WT races. Those (currently) go to Astana and Tudor.
They will be ‘forced’ to accept promotion on this basis.
May I ask why if Lotto either chooses not to move up to the World Tour or get turned down by the UCI for lack of budget doesn’t the 18th World Tour slot go to the next team on the list?
The actual regulation reads:
“The 18 top-ranked teams in the above-mentioned ranking, among the teams having applied for a UCI WorldTour licence in accordance with articles 2.15.009 and 2.15.010 and having met the criteria defined in articles 2.15.011c to 2.15.011f, are deemed to meet the sporting criterion”
My reading of this is that if Lotto don’t apply, or do apply but fail to meet the other criteria, then the top 18 teams which do submit valid applications would get the 18 WorldTeam licences.
The last time around saw a number of teams outside the top 18 submitting applications for this very reason
Thank you. That does make more sense.
As it stands, won’t automatic invitations for the grand tours go to Astana and Tudor?
Also in case anyone is wondering there’s also a contest for the women’s World Tour but it’s hard to do a blog post on/updates as it’s less dynamic: Roland get relegated, EF-Oatly take their place, it’s been this way since the end of last season and nothing is changing to alter it.
I still think Uno X ends up above Astana. Unless the latter all starts taking whatever Scaroni has been so far this season. What in his past has really portended his results this year. Also think Astana may have had a lot of guys peak early to mop up some easier early season points.
You mean that you believe that at Uno X they already started all taking the “special cut” à la ski jumping worlds?
😉
(Yep, I agree with the last couple of sentences anyway).
For Scaroni, we should remember these are early season lower-level races in which he is scoring points. This is not always hard to achieve if it is made a specific priority by the team. The big question for Astana is whether they can maintain this momentum later into the season when the bigger races are on and the bigger riders are peaking. They may find it challenging.
I think the top 18 won’t change unless Lotto folds. Astana have levelled off and will struggle in the bigger races coming through now, although Uno-X is an outside chance of coming through.
Picnic-PostNL seem exposed in that two of their top three riders (Bardet and Poole) have been/are injured. That leaves a big hole for upcoming races such as Catalunya, and also places considerable weight on Onley’s young shoulders. Maybe it’s time for a final classics fling from Degenkolb or some sprint form from Jakobsen.
van den Broek?
I hope so!
Picnic-PostNL will be delighted – and relieved – to have the win and Eekhoff’s 200 UIC points from Nokere Koerse.
Cofidis scored as many *not* winning the race 😉
Yet they both will be even more delighted by Astana having as their best placed athlete Aaron Gate… at 35th.
Astana partly reduced the negative impact at Milano-Torino, but only mildly so.
On a related issue, I note that the way that WorldTeams select which WorldTour race they are going to skip each season has now been laid out in a rules amendment which will take effect on 1 November this year, applying to the 2026 season onwards.
The short version of it is that if more than 4 teams apply to skip a race, the lowest ranking teams from the previous year get priority and the other teams will get to choose again.
The rule is going to be the same for both the (Men’s) WorldTour and Women’s WorldTour.
2.15.191
All events registered on the UCI WorldTour calendar (except the obligatory participation events listed in article 2.15.127)shall be obliged to invite and accept the participation of all UCI WorldTeams to take part in their event.
UCI WorldTeams must inform the UCI of the event for which they wish to decline their participation for the following season, if any, no later than 10th December. The UCI will inform the organiser who will be required to provide as many additional invitations to UCI ProTeams as the number of UCI WorldTeams which declined. The additional invitations to UCI ProTeams are in addition to obligatory invitations as defined by article 2.1.007bis.
A maximum of four UCI WorldTeams may decline their participation in the same
event. If more than four have selected the same event, the four teams with the lowest
ranking on the UCI World Ranking by teams from the previous season will be
authorised not to participate. The other teams will be allowed to select a different
event for which less than four UCI WorldTeams have declined participation within 15
days of the UCI’s notification.
The events shall only invite other teams within the number of places available after
receipt of responses according to the above-mentioned process.
Very interesting, thanks.
Do Gleb Syritsas Points count for relegation? And what about Mulubrhans Points in Rwanda?