We’ve started the first year of a three year promotion and relegation cycle. As a result the urgency and desperation is gone. Keep an eye on two things instead: financial health of the World Tour teams and the jostling teams in the second division.
Scoring recap
Riders get points from the results in UCI races as set out here for the men and here for the women. The team scores are the combined total of the best 20 riders for men’s teams and the best 10 riders for women. Teams are then ranked on their combined scores for three seasons. The top-18 teams are eligible for the men’s World Tour, the top-15 for the women’s Wold Tour.
These rankings are updated here every Tuesday by the UCI, other sites keep a record too but the UCI is the official one and includes points deducted by commissaires that don’t always get picked up by results; but even the UCI tables can have mistakes.
New 2026-2028 cycle
Human nature means deadlines matter more the closer they get and we’re at the start of the 2026-2028 cycle. Anecdotally though there’s more urgency among teams with management acutely aware of the need to score now. Gone are the days when team managers didn’t know which year of the relegation cycle they were in, now they’re more likely to know precisely how many points a rider will get for sixth place in a 1.Pro race. Calendar choices and race schedules are being made with points in mind for plenty of teams.
The relegation race is real
If Pinarello-Q36.5 and Tudor Pro Cycling look and feel like World Tour outfits then which two teams currently sitting in the World Tour risk will lose their places to the them? To speculate Groupama-FDJ and Picnic-PostNL fared worst last year, look weak today and have concerns about whether they’ll exist come 2029, but feel free to cite other teams. Plenty of men’s teams don’t have to worry about relegation but almost half of the 18 ought to.
But who survives?
Indeed three years is a long way out and unlike other promotion and relegation contests in different sports pro cycling has an existential one where who knows which teams will still be around in 2029? Last year’s Race for Survival post needs an update as a whole separate post. Finances and relegation are intertwined, teams can’t hire big scorers; sponsors won’t stay if they’re getting less for more.
Why all this?
The World Tour promotion-relegation system gets blamed but surely it has to exist in some form? Some team owners howl that unlike other sports they don’t have ticket revenue and get little in TV rights income but they do have one big implicit asset: guaranteed entry to the Tour de France. Like it or not, the French race counts for vast majority of a team’s media exposure and by extension the rationale for team sponsorship. Square this and a team becomes a durable, if brittle, proposition.
Given the sport’s structure won’t change overnight, some sort of ranking system seems fair where stronger teams can replace weaker ones. Doing this over three seasons allows for an annus horribilis and for teams to recruit their way out of trouble. Ranking teams based on a lot of their riders still means some can be tasked with helper roles and adds a depth to the count rather than basing it of a handful of top scorers which would reward the winners even more.
All this is done with rules and handled by the UCI. It’s surely better than race organisers subjectively awarding invites; or worse corrupted by pay-to-play (we see this where some team sponsors become race sponsors: never mind making additional revenues, this reveals how teams will actually pay if they can).
Soft landings
Relegated teams are not cast into the wilderness either, they should qualify for automatic invites to the major races.
A means to an end
Being a top team is not the point it itself, the right to compete in the best events is just the start, it’s the ability to deliver here that really counts. The story of Arkéa-B&B Hotels is illustrative, it targetted a lot of smaller races to score big during the 2020-2022 cycle and won promotion. Only on moving up it won just once in the World Tour and faced with the rising costs and shrinking results the team folded. Teams need a plan and matching resources to thrive in the World Tour.
Reform it?
The system can’t be perfect and is not set in stone but there are few obvious tweaks. Teams travelling far to score points in races where many of their peers are absent is gaming the system; but then again it’s also a boost for races on the Asian calendar that can hope to attract more teams. Teams having to score points in small races can have an opportunity cost as it tires riders to chase points; but this only happens when a team is not winning points in the big races.
Instead calls for reform are likely to be more radical, like a franchise system where teams face no jeopardy but that’s a whole other blog post. You can see the gains in stability but the risks where teams go stale but hog their spot and can’t be replaced by new entrants.
Women’s World Tour
Last year VolkerWessels were declined promotion. This means 14 teams in the Women’s World Tour when the rules allow 15. It suggests there’s not much of a cliff edge and a team outside of the World Tour can find advantages, securing invites to races it wants while declining to take part in events where its sponsors have little interest and ensuring the roster isn’t overstretched by a long calendar.
The women’s relegation race is less intense, if no team wants to move up then relegation is less of a worry. For now though as there are plans for more women’s teams to launch next year and this could change the equilibrium. This could mark more competitive tension compared to the men but again it also depends on the financial viability of all teams.
The immediate action is over the one year rankings
Teams outside of the World Tour need to finish in the top-3 in order to get an automatic invite to the World Tour races. Tudor and Q36.5 ought to qualify here but can Cofidis join them? They’re racing against TotalEnergies and Unibet Rose Rockets for this spot with the possibility of Caja Rural, Kern Pharma or Burgos Burgpellet BH scoring if they get a metaphorical tailwind.
There’s also secondary contest here where to be eligible for a grand tour invite a team must be inside the top-30, this is a real pressure for the likes of Burgos and Bardiani.
Conclusion
A stressful system for team managers but given the structure of the sport is not going to change overnight then promotion and relegation is here to stay.
Three years out from the next cut means the contest is a background story this season. Keep an eye on the team rankings from time to time but this blog won’t be doing weekly updates. For now Jayco are off to a great start while Picnic-PostNL are struggling… but it’s mid-February.
It’s just as worth watching the financial health of teams to see if they’ll exist come 2029 but finances correlate with scores. Teams struggling to deliver results will find it hard to tap sponsors for more. It’s this that can change the equilibrium and come 2029 it might be budget and viability that weighs on promotion and relegation more than UCI points but given no team should plan on rivals imploding they’re all chasing points.