The women’s Tour of Flanders 2026 start list is strong enough that the list of major absentees is not especially long, but there are still a couple of names whose absence changes the shape of the race.
The biggest one is Marianne Vos. The other standout omission is Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney. Both would normally have been central figures in how the race might unfold, but they are missing for very different reasons.
If you want the full race context around the riders who are racing, ProCyclingUK’s How to watch Tour of Flanders Women 2026 in the UK and Tour of Flanders Women 2026 contenders preview are the natural starting points.
Marianne Vos
Vos is the biggest late withdrawal from the race. She will not start the women’s Tour of Flanders because she is staying with her family following the death of her father, Henk, last week.
That is first and foremost a personal absence, not a sporting one. But in racing terms it is still a significant loss to the event. Vos won the Tour of Flanders in 2013 and remains one of the smartest and most adaptable riders in this kind of race. Even when she is not the outright favourite, she is the sort of rider who can shape the final through positioning, timing and sheer experience.
Her absence also changes the tactical options for Team Visma | Lease a Bike. With Vos in the line-up, the team would normally have another card to play deep into the race alongside Pauline Ferrand-Prévot. Without her, the team loses one of its most reliable ways of covering different race scenarios.
Photo Credit: GettyKasia Niewiadoma-Phinney
Niewiadoma-Phinney is the other major name missing from this year’s race. She has not raced since her crash at Milan-Sanremo Women, and Tour of Flanders was not part of her original 2026 programme anyway because her spring was already more focused on the Ardennes races.
That makes her absence slightly different from Vos’s. This is not simply a last-minute withdrawal from a race she had fully built towards. Instead, it is the result of both her crash-disrupted run-in and a race calendar that was already leaning away from the cobbled side of spring.
Even so, she is still a notable omission. Niewiadoma-Phinney has regularly been one of the most aggressive and visible riders in the biggest one-day races, and her ability to survive repeated climbs and remain dangerous in reduced finales means she would almost certainly have been part of the wider contenders conversation.
For more on how the race bridges into the next phase of the spring, ProCyclingUK’s beginner’s guide to Brabantse Pijl Women 2026 and Brabantse Pijl Women 2026 route guide help explain the shift towards the Ardennes that riders like Niewiadoma-Phinney are often targeting.
Who is still racing despite some doubt
A few big names who might have seemed uncertain are still expected to be there, which is part of why the women’s Tour of Flanders field still looks so deep.
Pauline Ferrand-Prévot remains one of the key names in the race despite a relatively light road programme so far this season. Puck Pieterse is also still in the mix, while Elisa Longo Borghini is expected to race too, even if there are still some questions around exactly how sharp she will be.
That distinction matters. There is a difference between a rider being absent and a rider arriving with less than perfect preparation. In this race, the latter may still be good enough to matter a great deal.
What these absences mean for the race
Vos’s absence removes one of the most versatile and tactically intelligent riders from the field. Niewiadoma-Phinney’s absence takes away another rider who would normally be expected to feature heavily once the race starts to split apart on the climbs.
Even so, this is not a race that has been hollowed out by withdrawals. Far from it. The front line remains exceptionally strong, and the race still has more than enough depth to produce a major showdown between the biggest names of the spring.
What changes is the texture of that showdown. Without Vos, there is one fewer rider capable of reading a chaotic finale better than almost anyone else. Without Niewiadoma-Phinney, there is one fewer aggressive all-rounder to animate the climbs and force uncomfortable decisions from the favourites.
So the headline answer is quite simple. The two biggest names missing from the women’s Tour of Flanders 2026 are Marianne Vos, who has withdrawn following the death of her father, and Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney, whose spring was already more Ardennes-focused and whose build-up was then interrupted by her crash at Milan-Sanremo Women.
