The UCI announced the list of teams who have applied for WorldTeam, Women's WorldTeam and ProTeam licenses for the coming season, revealing three new applicants for the top tier for women and four teams hoping to join the ProTeam ranks.
Continental squad AG Insurance-NXTG have applied for a top-tier license as announced in July. Their application is listed under AG Insurance-Soudal Quick-Step, reflecting their relationship with Patrick Lefevere's WorldTeam.
Ceratizit-WNT will finally step to the top after being one of the top 15 teams of the past three years, while the Ciclismo Mundial team, who raced as Planta-Pura this season, are the third team looking to move into the WorldTour.
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As reported previously on Cyclingnews, the Roland Cogeas Edelweiss Squad have applied as Israel-Premier Tech Roland, as the men's WorldTour sponsors from the past three seasons will move into a more prominent role in 2023.
Human Powered Health, who have a current Women's WorldTeam and men's ProTeam, were not listed on the press release by the UCI, but the team told Cyclingnews that this is due to a delay in their application.
"This is due to an administrative delay with the bank in charge of our team guarantee. We changed banks this year, and it took them a little longer to get off the start line with this than we hoped," a team spokesperson said.
"Human Powered Health’s funding for 2023 is all in place, and we are busy building towards an exciting new season as the guarantee is processed."
This year's remaining Women's WorldTeams were all listed as applying to renew for 2023.
On the men's side, all 18 of the existing men's WorldTeams plus promotion candidates Alpecin-Deceuninck, Arkéa-Samsic and Uno-X Pro Cycling have submitted applications for 2023, although the latter appear not to have satisfied the sporting criteria for promotion.
TotalEnergies, who were widely expected to apply for a WorldTeam licence, instead have applied for ProTeam status.
Uno-X also did not appear to meet the sporting criteria, so promotion is unlikely. They signed Alexander Kristoff for 2023 and would be expected to continue as a ProTeam.
B&B Hotels-KTM were not among the other 10 existing ProTeams listed and, like Human Powered Health, were likely missing from the list for the same reason as the women's team.
However, the absence of Drone Hopper-Androni Giocattoli's is more worrying as the team are facing an uncertain future amid a search for a new title sponsor.
The ProTeam list is down by two teams, as Alpecin-Deceuninck and Arkéa-Samsic are confirmed to have applied for WorldTeam licenses since they met the sporting criteria of being in the top 18 teams.
There were four new teams on the list, all from the Continental ranks. The most exciting is New Zealand's Bolton Equities Black Spoke, who were ranked 24th in the UCI Team Rankings in 2022. Also are Fabian Cancellara's Tudor Pro Cycling project, Team Corratec from Italy, and Q36.5 Pro Cycling, presumably a new team founded by former Qhubeka/NTT manager Doug Ryder.
