The 15 teams that will be included in the 2024 Women’s WorldTour will be decided on the combination of a team’s 2022 & 2023 season UCI points. The end of the 2023 season will see the first time that this process has been played out as the licence cycle for WWT teams changes. Previously, teams were given 4 year licences if they were one of the first to join the WWT, giving security. That was back in 2020 and saw 8 teams join the Women’s WorldTour. Team SD Worx joined them the following year and were secure in the WWT for 3 years. The reboot of the Tour de France Femmes and the guaranteed invite to that race by being in the WWT, saw the teams shoot up to 14 in number with 2 years guaranteed.
The end of the 2022 season saw the first points battle as for the first time, there were more teams applying for the WWT than there were available spots. Fenix-Deceuninck beat Ceratizit-WNT and AG Insurance-NXTG to the 15th and final Women’s WorldTour spot for this season.
The top 15 teams that apply at the end of the 2023 will be granted WWT licences for the 2024 and 2025 seasons, pending the UCI’s satisfaction that they also pass a number of other administrative & financial criteria.
Currently there are successful teams that have, up to this point, shown no interest in applying for Women’s WorldTour status. One of those is Parkhotel Valkenburg who are happy in their role as a team that develops riders just below the top of the sport. They will occupy some of the top-15 spots over the 2023 season but can be almost certainly discounted from the Women’s WorldTour promotion race. We can also probably rule out the likes of ATOM Deweloper, Canyon SRAM Generation (who are a development team anyway), Tashkent City Women and Cofidis.
There are some genuine maybes as well. The likes of Lifeplus-Wahoo and Team Coop-Hitec Products won’t rule out making an application but they also won’t be first the queue to put one in as well. Neither wants to sacrifice their team’s future stability just for the WWT status. St Michel-Mavic-Auber93 may also fall into this category.
All of the existing WWT teams, plus Ceratizit WNT, AG Insurance-Soudal Quick-Step, Zaaf Cycling and potentially Laboral Kutxa are all likely to submit applications to join the Women’s WorldTour if possible.
A secondary point is that the top-2 non-WWT teams will also receive mandatory invites to Women’s WorldTour races. Some of the teams in the maybe category, may be happy with that status as it can see them guaranteed to take part in the biggest races for a season.
2024 Women’s WorldTour Promotion/Relegation Standings
Last Updated: 14th March 2023
Whilst the blue line is set to show the top 15 teams – the virtual top 15 for the actual Women’s WorldTour applicants may actually discount teams above the line.
For example, Parkhotel Valkenburg (pink) may be above the line, with Human Powered Health (orange) just below it. In this case, because Parkhotel Valkenburg are unlikely to apply to join the WWT, Human Powered Health would be the virtual 15th WWT team in the standings.
For reference, the paragraph above the graph tries to highlight which teams are considered likely to apply for WWT status and which teams will not.
