Bauke Mollema has confirmed that 2026 will be his last year as a professional rider, announcing the decision on social media on Thursday evening.
“Time flies when you’re having fun,” Mollema wrote, looking back on a career that has taken him from local Dutch club NWV Groningen to the top tier of the sport. “I’m very grateful to have lived my dream for 20 years. It’s time to start my final season as a professional rider. One more year, one last dance. See you on the road!”
The 39-year-old begins his farewell season with Lidl-Trek, bringing down the curtain on one of the modern era’s most consistent stage racers and breakaway hunters, a rider who has delivered across Grand Tours and one-day racing alike.
A career built on endurance, opportunism and big days
Mollema’s palmarès spans the full range of pro cycling, but his defining moments have tended to arrive when a hard race turns tactical and survival becomes a test of judgement as much as legs.
His biggest one-day triumph came at Il Lombardia in 2019, when he rode clear late on to win the season’s final Monument.
He also won the Clásica de San Sebastián in 2016, another result that underlined his ability to time an attack and commit to it when others hesitate.
In the Grand Tours, Mollema has finished inside the top ten overall in all three, a rare marker of long-term consistency. Along the way he collected stage wins at the Tour de France in 2017 and again in 2021, plus a Vuelta a España stage win in 2013, results that reflect both his climbing resilience and his knack for making the right move from the breakaway.
From Rabobank roots to a Trek era finale
Mollema’s message also nods to the teams and systems that shaped him: the Rabobank years, the Belkin period that followed, and then the extended second act with the Trek organisation that has carried through to today’s Lidl-Trek structure.
What comes next is likely to look familiar: Mollema as the durable, intelligent rider who can animate a stage from a break, shepherd leaders through difficult terrain, or turn a chaotic day into an opportunity. The difference is that every big move now lands with extra meaning, because the peloton has been told, clearly and in his own words, that this is the last dance.
What to watch in 2026
Mollema has not outlined a farewell calendar yet, but his history points to the same kind of terrain where he has always been most dangerous: hard, selective one-day races and mountainous stages that invite initiative rather than waiting.
Either way, the message is simple. 2026 is the closing chapter, and one of the peloton’s most reliable long-range racers wants to write it properly, out on the road.
