After 21 years of existence, the curtain now looks certain to fall on WorldTour team Arkéa-B&B Hotels, as the squad reached the official October 15 deadline to register for a 2026 licence with no sponsor for the following year.
"I haven't submitted anything because I don't have anything," Arkéa manager Emanuel Hubert, who has spent months looking for an estimated €20-30 million to keep his team going, told AFP on Wednesday.
Although there has yet to be an official press release, reports indicate that all 150 employees, including 52 riders across three squads, have now been informed that the teams will fold at the end of the season.
Title sponsors Arkéa and B&B Hotels told Hubert back in the summer that they would not be continuing in 2026, but despite an all-out search, new sponsors were not to be found. The team are currently racing in the Tour of Guangxi, but Sunday's Chrono des Nations time trial, on home soil in western France, looks set to be their last race.
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Formed 21 years ago as low-level Continental squad Bretagne-Jean Floc'h, Arkéa-B&B Hotels are currently one of four French teams out of the 18 in the WorldTour, which they joined in 2023.
While staying close to to their roots in France's cycling heartland of Brittany throughout and with a tremendously loyal local fan base – "The newspapers never stopped talking about us. I got more recognition for winning the Tour of Brittany that year than I had done the previous eight in [French squad] Credit Agricole," Benoît Poilvet, a pro with the squad in 2008, told L'Équipe. – over the years, the team gradually expanded in size and ambitions.
They attained Pro-Conti level in 2011 and, at a point when the team had Bretagne-Séche Environnement as their main sponsors, took part in the Tour de France for the first time in 2014.
Equally, while the team started signing bigger and bigger names like André Greipel, Nacer Bouhanni, Nairo Quintana and Arnaud Démare, the return of riders like top French climber Warren Barguil, a former stagiére in the squad, or the progress of Kévin Vauqelin, born in neighbouring Normandy, kept them close to their Breton beginnings.
Arkéa-B&B Hotels' structure broadened in the last three years to include a development team and a women's team, with Belgium's Lotte Claes taking one of their most important recent victories at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad just this February.
There have been rumours that the men's squad could continue at Continental level, but according to Ouest-France, this now appears to be very unlikely.
Meanwhile, a significant number of their top riders have either retired, like the sprinter Démare – French cycling's fourth most prolific winner ever with 97 wins – or moved onto other teams, like Vauquelin, second in the Tour de Suisse this summer, but who delayed the news of his signing for Ineos Grenadiers out of respect for his current squad.
Just on Wednesday, it emerged that one of Arkéa's most promising young riders, Cristian Rodríguez – Spain's best-placed finisher in the last Tour de France – had signed with XDS-Astana for 2026.
Hubert all but predicted a difficult future for Arkéa-B&B Hotels last year, when he told Ouest-France, "In less than five years, 60% of the French teams will have disappeared. What is happening in the amateur will affect the professional world very quickly."
Certainly, when it comes to his own squad, his words have sadly proved all too prophetic.
