The Union Cycliste Internationale posted the official record of 2026 Continental groups for the 2026 season on Saturday, with 105 listed for males and 20 for ladies. This represented a 46% drop in males’s Continental crew registrations in a single yr and a 27% discount for the ladies.
Italy led the record of males’s groups with 10, adopted by seven groups registered in France, Germany, Netherlands and the US. Simply two years in the past there have been 178 males’s Continental groups registered worldwide.
In 2024 there have been six groups representing Colombia whereas from North America there have been three from Canada and two from Mexico. These international locations shouldn’t have any registered groups this yr.
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Nonetheless, the variety of males’s Continental groups within the US have risen from 5 to seven in these two years. The longest-running growth squad with a UCI licence was Hagens Berman Jayco, now in an 18th version. The latest squad was APS Professional Biking by Cadence Cyclery, primarily based in Texas with an 11-rider roster of riders from Eire, Nice Britain and the US. Among the many crew workers is four-time USPro street champion Freddie Rodriguez.
„One of many objectives as a Continental crew is to offer as many riders as potential the chance to nonetheless make it, even when it may be a little bit later of their profession. As a result of rider identification is occurring earlier, there are riders being missed [for top tier teams]. We’re making an attempt to foster them and get them able to be a type of riders to be picked and go on to the following stage,“ Rodriguez informed Cyclingnews.
South Africa was again after a four-year absence with one males’s squad, Workforce Tshenolo Professional Biking, which competed on a membership stage in 2025. The squad options an all-South African 10-rider roster led by former WorldTour rider Reinardt Janse van Rensburg, who returns for a second yr. A former GC winner of Tour of Langkawi at Workforce Dimension Knowledge, the 36-year-old took the silver medal within the time trial eventually yr’s African Continental Championships, which was received by his new teammate Brandon Downes.
On the ladies’s facet, Italy, Nice Britain and Germany led the best way with three groups every. Of be aware had been an absence of ladies’s groups in South and Central America, whereas there was just one crew representing North America, USA’s Virginia’s Blue Ridge TWENTY28, now a fourth consecutive season on the Continental stage.
Two years in the past there have been 56 ladies’s groups on the Continental stage, with the US having a bunch of 5 and the Continental area represented with single groups in Canada, Panama and Colombia.
