Julia Kopecky will leave SD Worx-Protime at the end of the 2026 season and join Lidl-Trek on a two-year contract running through to the end of 2028.
The 22-year-old Czech champion becomes another young addition to a Lidl-Trek women’s squad looking to develop riders capable of taking on greater responsibility over the coming seasons. Kopecky arrives with a particularly broad skillset, combining strong time-trialling with the durability required for the Classics and enough finishing speed to remain dangerous from reduced groups.
Her 2026 season has provided some of the clearest evidence yet of that versatility. Kopecky completed the Czech national road race and time-trial double in June, adding a third consecutive elite title against the clock, while 15th at Paris-Roubaix Femmes underlined her potential on the cobbles.
Lidl-Trek confirmed the move on Monday in its official announcement of Kopecky’s contract through 2028.
“I’m excited to race for Lidl-Trek next year, it’s a big new chapter in my career,” Kopecky said.
“I’ve always liked the way Lidl-Trek races, with an aggressive, attacking style. I’m looking forward to becoming part of that, contributing to the team, and achieving the best possible results.”
Lidl-Trek see Kopecky as more than a long-term project
Kopecky’s age makes the development potential obvious, but Lidl-Trek are not signing her simply in the hope that she becomes useful several seasons from now.
Women’s Team Manager Fränk Schleck believes the Czech rider can already contribute across a wide range of races while gradually developing towards a more prominent individual role.
“Julia represents an important part of our philosophy: identifying young riders with significant potential and giving them the environment to continue developing,” Schleck said.
“What we particularly like about Julia is that she is a true all-rounder. She can contribute in many different types of races and different situations, which gives us a lot of flexibility as a team.”
That description fits a career in which Kopecky has rarely fallen neatly into one category.
She can time-trial. She can handle cobbles. She has produced results in stage races and one-day events. She can work within a team plan without necessarily disappearing before the decisive part of the race.
For Lidl-Trek, that provides options before they have to decide exactly what kind of rider Kopecky will become at her peak.
Kopecky’s breakthrough came before her WorldTour move
Kopecky’s potential was already clear before she joined SD Worx-Protime.
She won Leiedal Koerse as a teenager in 2023 before producing a major breakthrough at the 2024 Tour de Feminin while racing for AG Insurance-Soudal NXTG.
Kopecky won the opening time trial and followed it with victory on stage two, eventually securing the overall classification as well as the points and young rider competitions.
The results were revealing because they did not depend on one specialist strength.
Her time trial gave her an immediate advantage. She then demonstrated enough road-racing strength and finishing speed to extend it before successfully defending the lead through the harder stages that followed.
That season earned her the move to SD Worx-Protime for 2025, although her first campaign with the Dutch team began awkwardly when knee inflammation delayed her debut. ProCyclingUK followed Kopecky’s difficult start to life at SD Worx-Protime as she worked back towards racing.
The experience since then has given her two seasons inside one of the strongest and most demanding structures in women’s professional cycling.
Photo Credit: Josef VaisharParis-Roubaix provided another clue about Kopecky’s ceiling
The most interesting result from Kopecky’s 2026 spring may have been 15th at Paris-Roubaix Femmes.
A top-15 finish does not immediately carry the same weight as her national titles, but the context matters.
Paris-Roubaix rewards positioning, strength, confidence across the cobbles and the ability to keep producing power after repeated accelerations. Kopecky remained competitive deep into a race eventually won by Franziska Koch ahead of Marianne Vos and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot.
For a 21-year-old at the time, surviving that level of attrition and finishing among the leading group of riders offered another indication that the Classics could become a significant part of her future.
Kopecky sees that area as one she wants to develop at Lidl-Trek.
“As a classics rider, I’m motivated to keep progressing in the big one-day races, get into the finals, and play my part there for the team and myself,” she said.
That final distinction matters.
Initially, Kopecky will often be valuable because she can support more established leaders. The longer-term objective is clearly to reach the point where she can also become one of the riders those leaders are working for.
Three straight Czech time-trial titles give Lidl-Trek another development route
Her progress against the clock provides another strand to the signing.
Kopecky has won the Czech elite time-trial championship in 2024, 2025 and 2026, with this year’s title forming part of her first road and time-trial national double.
She now has four elite Czech championships despite only turning 22 in August.
Rather than treating time-trialling as an established strength that simply needs maintaining, Kopecky believes Lidl-Trek can help her develop it further.
“One area I hope to improve during my time with the team is my time trialling,” she said.
“There’s so much technical knowledge and experience here, and I want to make the most of it to become a stronger TT rider.”
There is an obvious attraction for Lidl-Trek in developing that ability alongside her Classics qualities.
A rider who can perform strongly against the clock, survive difficult one-day races and contribute across rolling stage races has considerably more potential uses than a specialist restricted to one part of the calendar.
It could eventually open opportunities in general classifications at shorter stage races as well as one-day events.
Consistency is one of the qualities Schleck values most
For Schleck, Kopecky’s appeal is not based solely on isolated peak performances.
He highlighted her ability to contribute through a long season as an important part of Lidl-Trek’s assessment.
“She has also shown that she can be very reliable throughout the entire season,” he said.
“That consistency is extremely valuable. It’s not only about being good on one particular day or during one period of the year; Julia has the ability to perform, contribute to the team and take responsibility across a long season.”
That reliability becomes increasingly valuable as Women’s WorldTour calendars expand and teams balance several objectives simultaneously.
A rider does not need to be the designated leader to have an important season. Being capable of working in a Classics group, protecting a GC rider, contributing to a lead-out and then taking an individual opportunity when circumstances change can make an all-rounder particularly valuable.
Kopecky already has experience of that environment at SD Worx-Protime.
The difference at Lidl-Trek may be the balance between contributing to other riders’ ambitions and receiving more opportunities of her own.
Familiar faces should make the Lidl-Trek transition easier
Kopecky will also arrive in an environment containing riders she already knows from the junior and under-23 ranks.
“I’m familiar with some of the younger riders, I raced with them as a junior and in the U23s,” she said.
“It’s always nice to have familiar faces in the team, and hopefully share some good times on and off the bike. I’m also excited to be around the more experienced riders and staff; there’s a lot I can learn from them and take into my own development.”
That mixture of young talent and established experience has increasingly become part of Lidl-Trek’s approach.
The wider women’s roster is also entering a period of change. Shirin van Anrooij will leave Lidl-Trek for Canyon SRAM from November, removing one of the team’s established young Classics riders and creating space for the next group to assume greater responsibility.
Kopecky is not a direct replacement. Their strengths and career trajectories are different.
Her signing nevertheless fits the same broader question facing Lidl-Trek: how to build the next generation of a women’s team that intends to remain competitive across the Classics, stage races and Grand Tours.
Lidl-Trek want opportunities as well as development
The most significant part of Schleck’s assessment is that Lidl-Trek do not appear willing to define Kopecky’s first seasons purely through development.
“She already has the physical qualities and racing instinct to be competitive at a high level, and we believe there is still a lot more to come,” he said.
“We want to give Julia opportunities while continuing to develop her step by step. For us, she is not simply a rider for the future, she is someone who can already bring real value to the team from the beginning and continue growing into an even more important role.”
That should make the move particularly interesting.
SD Worx-Protime has provided Kopecky with two years inside arguably the deepest women’s team in the sport, but that same depth inevitably creates competition for leadership. Moving to Lidl-Trek gives her another elite environment with a potentially different route towards individual opportunities.
She arrives with a Tour de Feminin overall victory, three consecutive national time-trial titles, the Czech road championship and evidence that she can already survive at the front of one of the hardest Classics.
The question for 2027 is no longer whether Kopecky has enough talent to belong at Women’s WorldTour level.
It is how much more Lidl-Trek can extract from a rider whose eventual speciality still appears to be taking shape.
Kopecky’s move is the latest confirmed deal in ProCyclingUK’s women’s cycling transfers hub, tracking the signings, extensions, departures and retirements shaping the 2027 peloton.
