Il Lombardia closed another men’s Monument season on Saturday, with Paul Seixas winning the 2026 edition in Como. The women’s peloton, meanwhile, is still waiting for its own version of the race. RCS Sport remains committed to creating one, but the first edition is now being targeted for 2028 rather than 2027.
That leaves Il Lombardia as the only one of cycling’s five Monuments without a current women’s counterpart. The Tour of Flanders and Liège-Bastogne-Liège have established women’s races, Paris-Roubaix Femmes was added in 2021 and Milan-San Remo Women returned to the calendar in 2025. As the rest of the women’s Monument picture has filled out, the absence of an autumn race through Lombardia has become much harder to ignore.
There had been hope that the gap might close sooner. Reports earlier in 2026 pointed towards a possible 2027 launch, but that timetable was always dependent on RCS solving a series of practical problems around the event. The current expectation is that the women’s race will have to wait another year.
Why Il Lombardia is still missing
The problem is not finding a course worthy of the race. The roads around Como and Bergamo already provide the steep climbs, technical descents and repeated changes of rhythm that make the men’s Il Lombardia one of the most distinctive one-day races of the season. The difficulty is creating enough space on those roads for another major event on the same day.
RCS Sport has pointed to traffic and road closures as the central obstacle. Even staging the men’s race requires agreements with local authorities and police across a heavily used road network. A women’s race would mean more closures, more staffing and another moving race convoy, while the organiser also needs the sponsorship and budget to make the event sustainable rather than adding it for a single edition.
An RCS Sport source put the position plainly earlier this year: “We know that there should be a women’s Il Lombardia. It’s the only Monument without a women’s race.” The working idea has been to use the same day and many of the same roads between Como and Bergamo, but there is not yet a confirmed women’s route, distance or place on the calendar.
Vollering has kept the gap in view
Demi Vollering has been one of the most prominent riders pushing for the race. After training on the roads around Lake Como earlier this year, she publicly called on the UCI to make a women’s Il Lombardia part of the calendar. The Dutch rider’s intervention came at a useful moment, because RCS was already moving from a vague long-term idea towards a more concrete project.
There is an obvious sporting fit. Lombardia is the climbers’ Monument, built around longer ascents and a far more mountainous rhythm than the cobbled Classics. A women’s edition would give riders such as Vollering, Elisa Longo Borghini and Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney a late-season Monument that suits a different type of rider from Paris-Roubaix or the Tour of Flanders.
A different kind of Monument is still missing
The women’s calendar already has important autumn races in Italy, including the Giro dell’Emilia Donne and Tre Valli Varesine Women, but neither occupies the same place as Il Lombardia. The men’s race is both a major target in its own right and the traditional final Monument of the season. There is still no equivalent closing point for the women’s Monument programme.
RCS has expanded its involvement in women’s cycling considerably in recent seasons, taking responsibility for the Giro d’Italia Women and bringing Milan-San Remo Women back to the calendar. That makes Il Lombardia the obvious remaining gap. If the 2028 target can be met, all five men’s Monuments will finally have a current women’s counterpart. Until then, one of the most recognisable races in the sport remains open only to the men’s peloton.
