Tour de France winners and losers: Picnic-PostNL WorldTour relegation worries lessened with Oscar Onley's points haul

The Tour de France had far higher stakes than just prize money in 2025, with the race representing the most lucrative event of the year in terms of the UCI points that are critical for teams if they want to be in the WorldTour next year.

Only the top 18 teams will be allowed to earn WorldTour licenses after the UCI instituted a promotion/relegation system in 2019 that factors in team ranking totals over three years as a 'sporting criteria'.

While Tadej Pogačar and his UAE Emirates-XRG team are the biggest winners in terms of results and prize money, the next happiest team coming out of the race has to be Picnic-PostNL.

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The German team were on the bubble in 18th before the Tour de France but climbed two spots above the relegation zone in the three-year UCI team rankings thanks to an outstanding race by Oscar Onley.

Of course, Pogačar and his team were the biggest prize winners in the Tour, raking in €701,280.00 or 30.5% of the total available prize list of €2,299,300.00 with five stage wins, the overall GC and mountains classification.

Visma-Lease a Bike, second overall in the prize list, can be proud of their performance in the Tour. The team earned €383,150 in prizes, second to UAE Team Emirates XRG and 16.7% of the total.

Even if Jonas Vingegaard lost the overall by 4:24, the Dane held Pogačar to only 17 seconds time gain over the last eight stages. Without his crash and concussion in a crash during Paris-Nice, Vingegaard might not have gone three months without racing.

While Visma-Lease a Bike maintained that Vingegaard was as good as ever during the Critérium du Dauphine, and his relatively close second place there to Pogačar seemed to back it up, Vingegaard was lacking in the first half of the Tour and was already 4:07 down after the Peyragudes time trial.

The fact that Vingegaard could match Pogačar nearly blow for blow in the final eight stages shows that he still has the potential to defeat his rival; he just needs to have an injury-free season before the Tour.

Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe also did as well as they could have expected, with Florian Lipowitz landing on the podium and Primož Roglič finishing in eighth. Their pockets came home with €190,490 in prize money.

Other positives came from Lidl-Trek, who went home with their mission intact. Jonathan Milan won two stages and the green jersey, gained 1,280 UCI points, and came home with €103,770.

Overperforming teams

The Tour de France was an enormous success for Picnic-PostNL. The German team punched well above their weight, ending up fourth in the prize money total rankings behind Visma-Lease a Bike and Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, thanks to Onley's fourth place overall.

Although the German team did not win a stage or lead any of the jersey classifications, they scored 1,990 points during the Tour de France and earned the fourth-most in prizes at €124,430.

Onley had 11 top-15 stage finishes (points go from 100 to 1 over 15 places) and fourth place overall for a total of 1,370 points. Sprinter Tobias Andresen got into the points on four stages to earn 210. Frank Van den Broek scored 185 points, with Pavel Bittner, Warren Barguil and Niklas Märkl also earning UCI points.

The result is that after the Tour de France, Picnic-PostNl shot up five places in the 2025 rankings and climbed from 18th to 16th in the 2023-2025 UCI Team Rankings. They only have to stay in the top 18 to avoid relegation in 2026, and their future is looking a lot brighter thanks to the Scottish rider and his Tour de France teammates.

EF Education-EasyPost had a better-than-expected Tour, with Ben Healy landing in the top 10 overall and winning one stage and coming second on another.

Arkéa-B&B Hotels performed far better at the Tour de France than they have over the rest of the season. Kévin Vauquelin finished sixth overall, and the team added 1,055 points to their UCI total. Arkéa-B&B Hotels were 11th in the prize rankings - 10 places higher than they are in the 2023-2025 UCI Team Rankings.

Uno-X Mobility also rose to the occasion. Coming into the Tour de France, the Norwegian team were 1,365 points behind 18th-placed Cofidis. However, the team won a stage, earned €68,300.00 and gained 1,315 points.

That brought their deficit to Cofidis way down to just 299 points, accelerating their dream of being promoted to the WorldTour.

Underperforming teams

After such a brilliant start to the season, XDS Astana had a mediocre Tour de France, coming away with no stage wins and no days in any of the four jersey classifications.

Their top rider, Sergio Higuita, was a distant 14th, more than an hour down on Pogačar. Davide Ballerini, who finished second on the Champs-Élysées, earned 265 of the team's 790 points. Losing out to Picnic-PostNL, XDS Astana dropped one spot in the 2023-2025 team rankings but are still out of the relegation woods for now, in 17th and over 2,000 points ahead of Cofidis.

The Movistar Team could hardly put a foot right, with Einer Rubio their best finisher in 31st. They came away with no stage wins and no days in a jersey.

Ineos Grenadiers were only 13th in the prize rankings, even with Thymen Arensman's two stage wins. The team didn't have a rider in the top 10 of the Tour for the first time since 2020 and only the fourth time in the team's 16-year history.

Groupama-FDJ had an anonymous Tour, with Guillaume Martin only 16th on the prize total list. Romain Gregoire earned the team's most points with a couple of top 15 stage finishes.

Soudal-Quickstep went into the Tour with high hopes for Remco Evenepoel, only to lose the Belgian to a crash. A stage win by Valentin Paret-Peintre hardly makes up for what could have been a podium finish, and the team were only eighth-best in the prize list, earning a meagre €72,810.

No team had worse luck than Cofidis, and no team needed good results more than the French outfit, who are currently on the cusp of being relegated from the 2026-2028 WorldTour. They were last place in the prize money and earned only 155 UCI points, the lowest of any team. Their only result of note was Benjamin Thomas earning the polka dot jersey on stage 1.

Their sprinter, Bryan Coquard, had more controversy than results after inadvertently crashing Alpecin-Deceuninck sprinter Jasper Philipsen out of the Tour. He left the race after a crash of his own, and the team's GC hopeful, Emanuel Buchmann, was a distant 30th overall.

The lack of results drifted further away from the top 18 in the three-year rankings by 1,501 points.

Lotto-Intermarché merger could save Cofidis and Arkéa-B&B Hotels

After a successful Tour de France, it's not all sunshine for Arkéa this year. The team are without a title sponsor for next year and are currently trying desperately to strike a new deal to keep the team afloat.

However, they will have a better case to bring to the table after the news that Lotto and Intermarché-Wanty intend to merge at the end of the season. The move opens up one more rung on the WorldTour ladder, taking Lotto out of the promotion equation and giving more hope to French teams Cofidis and Arkéa-B&B Hotels.

A merger is the perfect solution for a lot of problems: First, it eliminates Lotto's budget woes. The team earned enough points in 2023 and 2024 to be almost assured of promotion, but they lost their top riders in last year's transfers and have struggled terribly this year. Second, a merger alleviates Intermarché-Wanty's worries. They are in 18th place from 2023-2025 after the Tour de France, but 1,501 points ahead of Cofidis.

Third, a merger would move Cofidis into 18th place, and now they only have to really worry about Uno-X Mobility getting ahead of them. The Norwegian team are just 299 points behind, so the French team will still have to be vigilant and try to score points wherever they can.

If they survive as a team, Arkéa-B&B Hotels are almost certain to be relegated from the WorldTour. Arkéa-B&B Hotel's best bet for automatically being invited to race the 2026 Tour de France is to be one of the top three ProTeams of 2025. The UCI rules have been expanded from two to three automatic invitations to WorldTour races - including the Tour de France for the top ProTeams.

Right now, Arkéa are behind ProTeams Uno-X Mobility, Israel-Premier Tech and Tudor Pro Cycling. However, Israel-Premier Tech are sitting pretty in 14th in the triannual rankings and are likely to be promoted, putting Arkéa second to Tudor in line for the automatic ProTeam invitations.

Either way, Cofidis will be in the Tour de France next year unless they are somehow overtaken by Q36.5 or TotalEnergies. If they aren't relegated, they're fine. If they are relegated, they only have to hold off Q36.5 and TotalEnergies, who are 592 points and 981 points behind, respectively.