Two months of the season to go and here’s a look at the standings in the promotion and relegation race. Things are close at the bottom end of the table with events off the road as well as likely as racing results to impact the outcomes.
As things stand Lotto and Israel-PremierTech get promoted as they are among the top-18 teams on the basis of their cumulative points score from 2023, 2024 and 2025. Meanwhile Cofidis and Arkéa-B&B Hotels get relegated. However this scenario looks like it won’t stand…
Arkéa-B&B Hotels is set to lose both sponsors. Team manager Emmanuel Hubert keeps pushing back the date when he’ll announce the team has run out of road for 2026, loyal readers will remember April was the first deadline, then the Tour, then the end of the women’s Tour was the deadline and now there’s no news. Could the team be saved? Yes is the simple answer, if someone reading wants to give them €20 million then they can ride on. More realistically they might try and salvage something, perhaps the women’s team?
The men’s team still has a hope too because of the points. Because while it faces relegation Kévin Vauquelin’s parting gift is a stack of UCI points which means that as of today it could be eligible for a Tour de France invite next year; but the real deadline is the end of the season and things are tight, it’s not a golden ticket that an incoming sponsor should bank on.
Cofidis are below the red line after a lacklustre Tour de France while relegation rivals Picnic-PostNL soared away. So they’re facing relegation. There is still a path to remain in the World Tour but it’s tricky. First they could overtake Intermarché-Wanty but that alone is a hard ask, the French team started the year 1,865 points behind, now they are 1,142 and so the trend says they won’t close the gap with only two months of racing left.
Instead Cofidis’ better hope for Intermarché is that the Belgian team merges with Lotto in time for 2026 which frees up a space in the World Tour for the French team currently in 19th place so it would sit in 18th place and thus the World Tour.
Only here come Uno-X. They started the season almost 3,000 points behind Cofidis and are now just 263 points short. So that 18th place could well go to the Norwegian team instead leaving Cofidis relegated. Uno-X say they are interested in the World Tour, it would give them guaranteed Tour starts from 2026-2028 rather than chasing wildcards each season, especially with rivals like Tudor and Q36.5 on the up too; but it’s costly to race everywhere for sponsors that only have an interest in their home markets.
The Intermarché-Lotto merger probably needs to happen for both teams to shore up their financing. Mergers only work by as a means of consolidating sponsorship, putting two teams of 25-30 riders together must result in a team of 25-30 riders so this is a fraught prospect just for the riders. Talks are still ongoing, Intermarché is very much Jean-François Bourlart’s team and a squad that can trace its origins out of a local cycling club. Lotto meanwhile is the longest-running title sponsor in the sport going back to 1985 but the involvement of the state lottery means it comes with political oversight, a polite way of saying some politicians want to meddle with the team. Reading the Belgian press it seems likely to happen but is far from a done deal.
If it doesn’t happen there’s a chance that Lotto has to turn down World Tour promotion because it can’t afford to race everywhere all the time; and Intemarché could even be overtaken by other teams, get relegated and because it’s having a dire time, not be eligible for automatic invites next year either. This is getting highly conditional, a what-if scenario raised by another one but still only one or two outcomes away from reality.
The 2026 Grand Tour Invite Race
If the World Tour has 18 teams then five more teams are eligible to ride the Tour de France, the sport’s golden ticket. Two places go to the best team on the 2025 rankings: currently Uno-X and Tudor.
But here comes a brain-frazzling chain of unstable scenarios because if Lotto and Intemarché merge then Uno-X could join the World Tour… so the next eligible team is Arkéa-B&B Hotels… but they look to be stopping which means the next team is Cofidis. Only the French team is only 440 points clear of Q36.5 and so the Swiss team could pip them if, say, Tom Pidcock has a good Vuelta.
But not qualifying automatically still means there are two spaces left so if everything goes wrong for Cofidis they could still hope to start the Tour de France next summer.
Conclusion
There’s only two months of racing left to the season but arguably the situation for promotion, relegation and the allocation of invites for 2026 is more uncertain today than it was at the start of the year. There are a lot of what-if conditional scenarios now regarding a Lotto-Intermarché rescue merger, if it doesn’t happen it could be tricky for both teams, but also others too. Rather than needing a calculator or a spreadsheet to tot up the points, it’s also down to more factors.
But there is also plenty to race for in the coming weeks. Uno-X, Cofidis and Q36.5 face a crucial period where results could determine their calendar for next year and beyond.