The cycling season is barely two months old, but already results – or a lack of – are shaping the narratives for the next cycle of the WorldTour’s promotion-relegation battle, with three WorldTeams currently out of the top-18 spots that determine who is eligible for top-tier licences.
It was back in 2020 when the UCI, cycling’s governing body, introduced a promotion-relegation element to the sport over a three-year cycle, and while notable changes were made to how points were awarded ahead of the 2023 season, teams and riders can still be regularly found moaning at how the system is set-up. 2026 is no different.
What is different to 2020 is that teams now know how to play the game. The prime example of that is XDS-Astana. They were cut adrift in the relegation spots after the end of the 2024 season, but after recruiting a data scientist who told them which races to target, they eventually climbed up to 15th in the final 2023-25 rankings. Instead of their once-sure relegation, it was Cofidis and not them who were demoted to the ProTeam ranks.
And Astana are back at it again. At the time of publication, they sit third in the 2026-28 rankings, behind only the superpower of UAE Team Emirates-XRG and fellow moneybags Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe. What is curious is that while UAE have won 16 races through eight different riders, Astana have ‘only’ claimed six victories, but they have more than double the number of UCI points than nine other WorldTour teams.
Astana won two stages of Paris-Nice – but that's now why they're third in the rankings.
How have they done it? By targeting success at one-day races. Almost everyone would agree that it’s more prestigious to win a stage of Paris-Nice – as Astana’s Max Kanter and Harold Tejada did last week – than a smaller one-day race, but the way the UCI points system works, it’s far more profitable to win or perform well in a one-day race. Kanter and Tejada scored 60 points each for their stage wins, but at the Asian Continental Championships, Astana picked up 575 points for finishing 1-2-4 in the road race, and 125 points in the time trial. Looking at that you wouldn't guess correctly which one was the more illustrious race. Christian Scaroni, Astana’s best rider last season, has picked up where he left, and already has 896 UCI points, more than 650 of which have been earned in the 10 one-day races he’s ridden so far.
To illustrate the point further, Lidl-Trek’s Jonathan Milan has won six stage race sprints already this season and is clearly the sprinter to beat. But he’s only earned 348 points so far. For comparison, his fellow fastman Dylan Groenwegen (Unibet Rose Rockets, 19th) has accrued 305 points for finishing first, third and seventh in three different one-day races.
The upshot is clear – winning stages doesn’t score you many points. And that forces teams like Picnic-PostNL and Movistar – teams who are historically stronger in stage races than one-day races – into a tricky position to confront: where do they get their points from?
Picnic PostNL haven't had much to celebrate this season.
It’s not to say that stage races don’t offer a bountiful of points. They do. But only the GC does. Take a look at Jayco-AlUla, for example. The Australian team have won only three times this season so far but were fifth in the team classification prior to Paris-Nice (they’re now seventh), largely thanks to Mauro Schmid’s high GC and one-day placings: 2nd at the Tour Down Under earned him 400 points; he picked up 250 points for winning the Muscat Classic; 222 for finishing fourth at the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race; and 140 for riding to fourth overall at the Tour of Oman. If teams have one or two riders who score points in both one-day races and in general classifications, they’re halfway there towards securing a top-18 spot come the end of the 2028 season.
That’s what must worry Picnic. The Dutch team have had the worst start of all WorldTour teams, and are currently languishing in 29th position in the rankings. Two spots lower and if they were a ProTeam they wouldn’t be eligible for a Grand Tour wildcard in 2027. Though Max Poole will pick up points in GCs, unless Fabio Jakobsen returns to his form of yesteryear, it’s hard to see where Picnic are going to pick up thousands of points.
The way to survive and thrive is clear: if you’re not performing well on the GC and not winning or at least podiuming in one-day races, you’re in trouble. Winning stages of the Volta a Catalunya or the Tour de Romandie just isn't going to move the dial.
On a related note, from 2027, point awards in other disciplines – cyclocross, gravel and mountain bike – will also be applicable for the WorldTour promotion-relegation rankings. That’ll benefit some teams and hinder others.
Lotto-Intermarché and Alpecin-Premier Tech are the other two WorldTour teams who are outside the top-18 at present. Of course, it’s early days. Very early days. Alpecin, through Mathieu van der Poel and Jasper Philipsen, will be expected to score heavily in the spring Classics and elevate the Belgium team up the rankings, while Soudal Quick-Step (11th) and Lidl-Trek (17th) will accumulate points in the forthcoming month, too.
But what is certain is that teams are already feeling the pressure, and if things don’t improve for some by the time the Giro d’Italia comes around, the panic button will be being pressed. The UCI points system has its flaws and is an imperfect system that can be gamed, but the positive of it is that it forces teams to be versatile and resourceful.
The aforementioned Quick-Step certainly got the memo: it’s said that they’ve ditched their GC ambitions with the exit of Remco Evenepoel to Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe, but in Ilan Van Wilder, Junior Lecerf, Mauri Vansevenant and Filippo Zana they’ve still got plenty of GC firepower. Why? Partly because just relying on Tim Merlier and Paul Magnier to scoop up points from winning dozens of sprints a season isn’t enough. Teams know how to play the system more than ever before.
