The Inner Ring | The 2025 Points Race

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Crunch time for the World Tour with two teams facing relegation and two aiming for promotion. Here’s a closer look at the contest ahead this year. It’s not the biggest story of the season but it will regularly affect tactics, race programs for teams and riders alike and so shape the season. And can Lotto afford promotion?

The Rules
Teams are ranked on the basis of their UCI points for each of the 2023, 2024 and 2025 seasons. This annual score is based on the total of a team’s 20 best scorers. Any ProTeams from cycling’s second tier in the top-18 are eligible for promotion. WorldTeams below 18th place face relegation.

There’s a secondary contest where the best ProTeams, including any relegated squads, are eligible for automatic invites to the top races next year based on the rankings of 2025 only. If there are 18 WorldTeams, then the two best squads here can be invited to the grand tours like the Tour de France and the three best teams get invites to the World Tour classics.

There’s also a further contest where for 2026 teams wanting a wildcard invitation for a grand tour have to be among the top-30 teams in the world, the threshold moves up from the top-40 and this means the likes of Euskaltel-Euskadi and Team Solution Tech-Vini Fantini need to score to be eligible for the Vuelta and Giro; without an invite they might stop racing.

The points scale can be seen here: https://inrng.com/2025/01/uci-points-rankings-2025.

The standings today
Despite the crucial nature of these rankings they’re not published by the UCI. So bloggers and team managers alike are left to compile them. The UCI updates the team rankings every Tuesday and this data – not just results but also points docked by commissaires – can be combined with the rankings for 2023 and 2024 to keep an eye on the promotion and relegation race. You can see the full standings above and the relegation race zoomed in below:

If today was the end of the season:

  • Lotto and Israel-PremierTech are among the top-18 and are eligible for promotion
  • Arkéa-Samsic and XDS-Astana are outside the top-18 and face relegation
  • Automatic grand tour invites for Burgos-Burpellet-BH, Tudor; TotalEnergies for the classics… but we’re one week into the season for this

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What to look for…
So far so prescriptive about promotion and relegation. But it might not be so simple. Just being above or below the top-18 doesn’t mean automatic promotion or relegation, there’s also a review process. But a team already registered and racing should be able to clear this admin hurdle.

The issue is who applies as promotion is elective. Three years ago Alpecin-Deceuninck were eligible to move up but they didn’t say out loud they’d got for it until well into the season. This left other teams guessing about their position in the rankings for several months.

Lotto are in the right place to get promoted and it’s been a stated goal. But can they afford it? Already the roster has been pilfered and they’re cutting back on racing this year to save on costs. Only promotion to the World Tour next year will be more expensive. The admin cost in fees is small, instead it’s the obligation to race every event and have a roster capable of this is the expensive part. They might like to be back in the World Tour but is the funding there? It’s something to watch as they search for a co-sponsor and also know that their main backer – the state lottery – faces regulation requiring gambling companies to exit advertising and sponorship by 2028.

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As suggested in the Predictions for 2025 post Arkea-B&B Hotels face relegation but also risk losing the sponsors. Will both renew, can the team find new backers? If the team stops it’ll vanish out of the rankings. Management have said they won’t string riders along and will make an announcement before summer.

XDS-Astana are far behind on the rankings after dire 2023 and 2024 seasons. But they’ve had a hiring spree and one week in already we can see this and their strategy is paying off. Near invisible in the World Tour’s Tour Down Under, they’ve scored big in lower level races in Spain last weekend. The hard part for them is going to be keeping this up all year, and featuring in World Tour races too for more points, and it’ll be interesting to watch.

Women’s World Tour
Teams are ranked on the basis of their points from 2024 and 2025 in order to qualify for a World Tour 2026. Look for EF Education-Oatly to rise up and Roland to lose out; and if VolkerWessels keep scoring they can get promoted while Uno-X risk dropping.

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