The story of the 2025 biking season in 12 pictures

The 2026 season is nearly upon us, so what higher second to look again on the previous 12 months in males’s highway biking?

The sport follows a reassuringly seasonal sample, from warm-weather early-season races in Australia and the Middle East, to the spring classics in northern Europe after which the three Grand Tours, in May, July and August/September. Increasingly, the early-winter close-season is dominated by big-money rider trades, as biking’s switch market begins to resemble that of soccer.

Here then are 12 snapshots from a memorable yr.

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January

There’s a shimmering optimism concerning the first WorldTour race of the season, The Tour Down Under — which is held every January in and round Adelaide within the state of South Australia. For European and North American riders, it’s a heat (typically too heat) escape from winter coaching, and a primary probability for followers to see them in new equipment, on new bikes and, for a lot of, in new groups. Sometimes, although, that view generally is a bit too shut for consolation…

February

Tadej Pogacar, alone. A well-known sight all year long that adopted however pictured right here throughout the queen stage of the UAE Tour — the unsettlingly-wide climb to Jebel Hafeet. Victory right here on the ultimate day wrapped up the Slovenian’s first stage-race win of the season.

March

The unofficial marketing campaign to make Strade Bianche — held every March on the white-gravel roads of Italy’s Tuscany area — the game’s sixth Monument grows louder annually. It is among the most anticipated occasions of the season, and the 2025 version didn’t disappoint, with Pogacar (twice) and Tom Pidcock, its winners over the earlier three years, duking it out. Pogacar crashed on a descent however recovered to catch after which drop the British rider, successful by practically a minute and a half.

April

Bike racing is a numbers recreation. Normally, if one group has three riders in a race’s finale and one other has only one, there’s solely a tiny probability the solo competitor will win — but it surely doesn’t all the time work out that means.

That was the case on this month at Dwars door Vlaanderen (Across Flanders), a WorldTour race in Belgium, when Neilson Powless of EF Education-EasyPost outwitted three Visma–Lease a Bike riders, together with fellow American Matteo Jorgenson and residential famous person Wout van Aert.

Instead of working the EF Education-EasyPost rider over in flip within the closing kilometres, Van Aert had been assured of successful a dash towards Powless. He was improper, and teammate Tiesj Benoot’s hand on his helmet within the background reveals simply how badly they tousled a golden alternative. Van Aert later apologized to his colleagues, saying, “I was just too selfish.”

May

Stage 20 of the Giro d’Italia was arguably the very best single day of Grand Tour racing in 2025.

Simon Yates’ redemption arc on the gravel slopes of the Colle delle Finestre, the identical climb the place he collapsed seven years earlier, noticed him flip a deficit of 1:21 on erstwhile chief Isaac del Toro into an unassailable lead of virtually 4 minutes. And spare a thought for the stage winner Chris Harper, whose victory hardly ever will get talked about, such was the GC carnage going down just a few kilometres behind him.

June

The opening stage of the Criterium du Dauphine in southeast France witnessed the biking equal of a photo voltaic eclipse — the game’s 4 greatest names off the entrance battling one another, mano-a-mano.

On a lumpy stage that everybody anticipated to be a day for the race’s few sprinters, Jonas Vingegaard as a substitute instigated a deluxe breakaway within the latter levels — one which additionally included former or reigning world champions Pogacar, Mathieu van der Poel and Remco Evenepoel, and which stayed away from the chasing pack, with Pogacar outsprinting Vingegaard to take the win.

July

Roadside followers cheer as Dylan Groenewegen passes by throughout the stage-five time trial on the Tour de France.

Road biking stays one of many solely main sports activities that’s virtually fully free to attend, although there are some working in it who need that to alter. The ASO, organizer of its greatest and most well-known race, doesn’t agree — for now, no less than.

August

Matthew Brennan is a reputation to watch in 2026.

The younger Englishman — who solely turned 20 in August — received 14 races this yr, shattering quite a few historic information alongside the best way. And regardless of the picture beneath — which reveals him outsprinting arguably the peloton’s strongest man, Lidl-Trek’s Jonathan Milan, on stage one of many Deutschland Tour on this month — Brennan is a flexible rider, who’s able to successful on cobbles and hilly programs too.

His group, Visma-Lease a Bike, properly prolonged and enhanced Brennan’s contract earlier this month, tying him up till 2029.

September

Remco Evenepoel celebrates his third successive time-trial victory on the UCI Road World Championships — held within the African nation of Rwanda in 2025. The Belgian now solely wants yet another victory to equal the document, shared by Fabian Cancellara and Tony Martin, however a much bigger goal in 2026 will probably be performing for brand spanking new group Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe after a big-money switch over the winter.

Peerless in time trials on flat terrain, the rider nicknamed ‘Aero-bullet’ wants to enhance his climbing if he’s to compete with the likes of Pogacar and Vingegaard on the Tour de France.

October

Pogacar sticks his tongue out as he rides to victory in Italy’s Il Lombardia for the fifth successive yr.

The 27-year-old — arguably much more spectacular in one-day races like this than he’s in multi-stage occasions — wants wins at Milan-Sanremo and Paris-Roubaix to finish his set of the game’s Monuments.

That reality makes these two races must-watch TV (as in the event that they weren’t already) in 2026.

November

Geraint Thomas — pictured right here being honored by his fellow professionals on the Tour of Britain, his last race, in September — formally retired in November. Wales’ 2018 Tour de France winner was instantly appointed as INEOS Grenadiers’ director of racing, and has since been given a shiny new signing to play with in 2026.

December

Pogacar exits a Benidorm lodge on two wheels on December 13.

That space of japanese Spain stays the pre-season coaching venue of alternative for the WorldTour peloton, and whereas the meet-ups there within the last month of the calendar yr used to have extra of a delicate, social-gathering vibe, lately the coaching is significantly extra aggressive.

As if to show the purpose, Pogacar set a new best time up the nearby Coll de Rates climb on December 19, throughout a trip that totalled greater than 200km (125 miles).

Welcome to 2026.