The UCI recently announced another regulation change for the 2026 season. Women’s WorldTour teams will now only have the luxury of skipping a single WWT race and will be expected to turn up and compete in all the other WWT events on the calendar. The timing makes sense as it’s the beginning of the next Women’s WorldTour cycle, with teams achieving WWT status will be granted 3 years of security at that level compared to the last couple of cycles which were 2 years to align with the men’s timetable.
Added to that change, teams won’t be able to just simply miss the same race each season. They must select a different race (if any) during each year of the 3-year cycle of WWT licences. That means, a team like SD Worx who missed the Australian races this year (and most recent years) would only be able to miss one of those races, then have to turn up to race the following 2 seasons.
The amount of races available to be missed is interesting given we’ve just had the Australian season, which notably contains a pair of Women’s WorldTour races in the Tour Down Under stage race and the Cadel Road Race one-day race around a fortnight later. There are a number of smaller races added to that which wouldn’t be affected by this rule change, other than maybe having too many WWT teams available to invite for their race level now.
Photo Credit: GettyWhat is going to change?
As it stands, from 2026 all WWT teams will now have to go to Australia for a part of every season as they won’t be able to miss both the Tour Down Under and Cadel Road Race in a year. The races have often struggled a bit for WWT participation, sometimes falling below the rules set out by the UCI but is given a bit of a free pass for being an important part of the WorldTour. This year saw 12 Women’s WorldTour teams participate in both races but in 2024 that figure was just 9 of the 15 teams.
There are also 3 non-skippable races for Women’s WorldTour teams – the Giro d’Italia Women, Tour de France Femmes, and Vuelta Femenina. Those won’t come as much of a surprise with attendance at those races almost hitting 100% with the odd gap here and there.
The new rule will bring the women’s peloton in closer alignment to the men’s peloton with teams generally forced to enter each major event and a couple of exceptions granted available for newer WorldTour races. Only 4 teams have been to all of the men’s WorldTour races in the last 2 seasons.
Potential effects of the rule change
The difference however is the squad sizes. Women’s WorldTour teams are growing steadily but their numbers are still around a dozen short of what the men’s peloton allows. Whilst there are fewer races, there’s still a situation where after target races, injuries, and travel expenses are all factored in, some WWT teams are very much struggling towards the end of the year. 7 of the 15 teams didn’t visit China for the 2024 Tour of Chongming Island and Tour of Guangxi, with some teams struggling to field full teams for the Simac Ladies Tour closer to home just before them.
So we may also see more WWT teams entering without full teams to races, especially those which aren’t that important to them. A barebones squad going out to Australia or China is likely but other races during the season might get the lip service treatment in order to manage total race days. If you haven’t got a major sprinter or echelon specialist, there’s not too much to be gained from attending Brugge-De Panne with a full-strength team other than exposing riders to the risk of injury and illness.
It’s riskier, but long term we could also see teams start to realise they can be ProTeam and qualify for the Women’s WorldTour wildcard spots. A similar situation has arisen in the men’s peloton for teams like Lotto. They are still able to do all the races they want to do (and need to do for sponsors) but can back out of anything that doesn’t have any appeal to them without issue. With the new licence cycle covering the 2026 to 2028 seasons, that effect isn’t likely to be seen for a little while.
The sanctions for not meeting the 1 missed WWT race a season haven’t been laid out yet but if it’s UCI points-based, many teams will probably feel like they can take the hit. The likes of SD Worx, FDJ-Suez and Lidl-Trek will barely even feel it. Any financial sanction is likely to be cheaper than a team trip to Australia as well, potentially rendering it all a bit moot as the WWT begins to strengthen itself further. How the UCI formulates this part will be key to seeing how the rule actually plays out in practice.
