Steven Kruijswijk will retire from professional cycling at the end of the 2026 season, bringing a 17-year career with the same team structure to a close.
The 39-year-old confirmed the decision during NOS programme De Avondetappe, having already indicated earlier in the year that 2026 was likely to be his final season. Kruijswijk will now use the remaining months of the year to complete one last racing programme with Team Visma | Lease a Bike.
His final Grand Tour is expected to be the Vuelta a España, where the Dutchman could have more freedom than usual in the absence of one of Visma’s major GC leaders. The race carries an additional personal connection because it begins in Monaco, where Kruijswijk lives, with the opening time trial passing close to his home.
Kruijswijk brings a 17-year professional career to an end
Kruijswijk has spent his entire professional career within the Rabobank, LottoNL-Jumbo, Jumbo-Visma and Visma | Lease a Bike structure, turning professional in 2010.
Across that period he developed from a promising Dutch climber into one of the most consistent Grand Tour riders of his generation, before gradually moving into a more experienced support role later in his career.
That experience has remained valuable in 2026. Kruijswijk has continued to feature in WorldTour squads, including Visma’s Tour de Romandie team and Tour de Suisse line-up, where his role increasingly centred on guiding younger riders through difficult stage races.
He also lined up at Liège-Bastogne-Liège this spring, underlining how his final season has still included a broad WorldTour programme rather than being built around one ceremonial farewell.
The 2016 Giro remains the great what-if
Kruijswijk’s career is inevitably tied to the 2016 Giro d’Italia.
He rode one of the best Grand Tour performances of his career, taking the pink jersey and appearing increasingly capable of winning the race before crashing on the descent of the Colle dell’Agnello.
The accident changed the entire shape of the Giro.
Kruijswijk lost significant time and eventually slipped off the podium, finishing fourth overall after looking like the strongest rider in the race for much of the final week.
It remains the defining near-miss of his career and one of the most dramatic Grand Tour reversals of the modern era.
The result also established Kruijswijk as far more than a dependable top-10 rider. For a period during that Giro, he was genuinely riding like a Grand Tour winner.
Tour de France podium followed in 2019
Kruijswijk eventually achieved his Grand Tour podium three years later.
He finished third at the 2019 Tour de France, behind Egan Bernal and Geraint Thomas, having ridden one of the most consistent races of his career.
That result remains the high point of his final palmarès. ProCyclingUK’s 2019 Tour de France prize money review recorded Kruijswijk completing the podium after improving on his fifth place from the previous season.
He was rarely the most explosive climber among the Tour favourites, but his strength was consistency. Kruijswijk could limit losses, ride long mountain stages at a high level and survive three weeks with relatively few bad days.
That reliability eventually put him on the podium in Paris.
Twenty-four Grand Tour starts underline his longevity
Kruijswijk’s retirement also closes an unusually long Grand Tour career.
He has started the Giro d’Italia nine times, the Tour de France seven times and the Vuelta a España seven times, with an eighth Vuelta expected later this month.
That would take him to 24 Grand Tour starts across his career.
His record includes repeated top-10 finishes and leadership roles, but later seasons increasingly saw him use that experience in support of other riders.
At the 2022 Tour de France, for example, Kruijswijk was part of the Jumbo-Visma mountain support around Jonas Vingegaard and Primož Roglič. Our Jumbo-Visma 2022 Tour de France line-up highlighted him alongside Sepp Kuss as one of the team’s key climbing domestiques.
His own race ended with a crash on Stage 15, but by then his role within the team had already shifted substantially from the GC leadership of earlier seasons.
The 2026 Vuelta offers one final opportunity
Kruijswijk’s expected final Grand Tour could be more open than many of his recent appearances.
Visma are not expected to take one of their biggest overall leaders to the Vuelta, potentially giving Kruijswijk more freedom to pursue stages, breakaways or even his own position on GC if his form allows.
That makes the race a fitting place to finish.
He has already started the Vuelta seven times and has regularly used it as either a leadership opportunity or an important late-season Grand Tour. ProCyclingUK previously looked at his role in the team’s 2024 Vuelta a España ambitions, when he was part of the experienced support around Sepp Kuss.
The 2026 race is different.
Rather than arriving primarily to work for another established Grand Tour leader, Kruijswijk could have licence to race more instinctively during the final three weeks of his career.
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Photo Credit: Cor Vos
Monaco start gives the farewell extra significance
There is also a neat personal detail to the 2026 Vuelta route.
The race begins in Monaco, where Kruijswijk lives, and the opening 9.4km individual time trial passes close to his home.
For a rider beginning his eighth and final Vuelta, that is about as personal a Grand Tour departure as the route could provide.
The 2026 Vuelta a España route then moves rapidly into much harder terrain, including Font-Romeu, Andorra and Alto de Aitana in the opening week.
Kruijswijk’s best days as a GC contender are behind him, but a mountainous Vuelta still offers plenty of terrain where his experience and climbing ability can matter.
A career built on consistency rather than volume of wins
Kruijswijk’s career is unusual because his reputation was never built around a large number of victories.
Instead, it came through accumulation.
He repeatedly finished high in Grand Tours, spent long periods as one of the strongest Dutch climbers in the peloton and developed into a rider teams could rely on over three difficult weeks.
The 2016 Giro showed how close he came to winning one.
The 2019 Tour finally gave him a Grand Tour podium.
Later years added a different kind of value, with Kruijswijk increasingly becoming the experienced mountain domestique around the next generation of Visma leaders.
That longevity is perhaps the clearest measure of his career. Seventeen professional seasons, potentially 24 Grand Tour starts and a podium at the Tour represent a body of work that few riders manage.
When Kruijswijk finishes at the end of 2026, Visma will lose one of the last remaining links to a much earlier version of the team.
The jersey has changed repeatedly during his career.
The rider wearing it never did.
