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UCI World Tour Teams 2026: Full List and How Licences Work
All 18 UCI WorldTeams racing in 2026, the two squads that were relegated, the rebrands you may not recognise, and how the three-year points race decides who stays.
Automatically summarised by AI from UCI
There are 18 UCI World Tour teams in 2026, and they hold their licences for the 2026-2028 period: Alpecin-Premier Tech, Bahrain Victorious, Decathlon CMA CGM, EF Education-EasyPost, Groupama-FDJ United, Netcompany INEOS, Lidl-Trek, Lotto Intermarché, Movistar, NSN Cycling Team, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, Soudal Quick-Step, Jayco AlUla, Picnic PostNL, Visma-Lease a Bike, UAE Team Emirates XRG, Uno-X Mobility and XDS Astana. Cofidis and Pinarello-Q36.5 applied for a place and were turned down, so both race as second-division ProTeams this season.
The UCI confirmed the line-up when it allocated licences for the new three-year cycle. Because more teams applied than there were licences available, the governing body fell back on what its rules call the sporting criterion: the points each team earned in the UCI World Ranking across the 2023, 2024 and 2025 seasons. That cumulative ranking, not a single season, is what separates the first division from the second. The same press release registered 14 Women's WorldTeams, 16 men's ProTeams and 7 Women's ProTeams for 2026.
The arithmetic behind the ranking is simpler than it sounds. Every professional race, from a Grand Tour stage to a national championship, pays UCI points to its top finishers, with the biggest WorldTour stage races and Classics paying the most. At the end of each season a team's score is the sum of its best 20 riders in the individual ranking. Add three seasons together and the top 18 teams earn the right to a WorldTour licence, provided they also pass the UCI's administrative, financial, organisational and ethical checks. A ProTeam that finishes inside the top 18 moves up; a WorldTeam that falls outside it drops down.
That is exactly what happened at the end of 2025. Lotto and Israel-Premier Tech, both relegated in 2022, climbed back inside the line with room to spare. Uno-X Mobility took the final place by a margin of just under 400 points over Cofidis after a 2025 season worth more than 10,000 points, according to Cyclist. Cofidis finished 20th and Arkéa-B&B Hotels 21st; Arkéa chose to fold rather than continue as a ProTeam, while Cofidis keeps automatic Grand Tour invitations in 2026 as one of the top three second-division teams from 2025. Picnic PostNL and XDS Astana escaped the drop zone, though the Licence Commission limited Picnic PostNL to a one-year licence with financial conditions attached before it can be extended to 2027 and 2028.
A merger reshaped the list as well. Intermarché-Wanty stopped as an independent structure and joined forces with Lotto, producing the Belgian team now registered as Lotto Intermarché. The Inner Ring noted that the merger is why the cut-off was effectively drawn at 19th place in the final 2023-2025 ranking rather than the usual 18th: one licence-holder disappeared, freeing a slot that Uno-X filled.
Two rebrands make the 2026 roster harder to recognise than the raw list suggests. Israel-Premier Tech became NSN Cycling Team after the Spanish sports and entertainment company Never Say Never and the Geneva-based investment platform Stoneweg formed a joint venture to take over the squad, which now races under a Swiss licence. Cyclingnews reported the switch on 20 November 2025, following protests at the Vuelta a España and the departure of sponsors Factor and Premier Tech. Separately, Ineos Grenadiers signed a five-year deal with the Danish software company Netcompany and became Netcompany INEOS Cycling Team from the start of the Giro d'Italia on 8 May 2026. The team stays British and stays owned by Sir Jim Ratcliffe, but its UCI code changed from IGD to NCI, and chief commercial officer Tom Hill has said the name could change again if a second co-title partner is found.
For the second division, the picture is just as competitive. The 16 ProTeams registered for 2026 include Tudor Pro Cycling, Pinarello-Q36.5, Cofidis, TotalEnergies, Caja Rural-Seguros RGA, Bardiani CSF, Team Polti VisitMalta, Equipo Kern Pharma, Euskaltel-Euskadi, Burgos-Burpellet-BH, Team Flanders-Baloise, Team Novo Nordisk, MBH Bank CSB Telecom Fort, Modern Adventure Pro Cycling, Toscana Nippo Rali and Unibet Rose Rockets. The top three non-WorldTour teams from the 2025 ranking, Tudor, Q36.5 and Cofidis, receive automatic Grand Tour invitations in 2026. Organisers still hand out two discretionary wildcards per race, but from 2026 a ProTeam must sit inside the top 30 of the UCI ranking to be eligible for one.
The clock has already restarted. Results from 2026, 2027 and 2028 feed a new three-year ranking that will decide the 18 WorldTour licences for 2029-2031. UAE Team Emirates XRG, which scored more than 40,000 points in 2025 alone, began the cycle on top, but the teams with the most to prove are the ones that only just made it: Uno-X, Lotto Intermarché and Picnic PostNL all have three seasons to show that a 2026 licence was not a one-off.
