The UCI has approved the invitation of a 23rd team to the 2025 Grand Tours, with the Tour de France immediately awarding their three wild card places to TotalEnergies, Tudor Pro Cycling and Uno-X Mobility.
Q36.5 Pro Cycling and Tudor are hoping to secure a wild card place to the Giro d'Italia alongside the Italian ProTeams, while the Vuelta a España organisers will have to decide between the Spanish ProTeams and other major ProTeams.
The 18 WorldTour teams are automatically invited to the Grand Tours, while the two best ranked ProTeams from the previous season also secure places. Race organisers can then award the final 'wild card' places.
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Last week, the UCI acknowledged that the majority of members of the Professional Cycling Council (PCC) were in favour of the decision and rubber-stamped it at a UCI Management Committee meeting on Monday.
"The arguments put forward for accepting this proposal were mainly based on the need to support second division teams (UCI ProTeams), while enabling organisers to strengthen the line-up for their race and giving riders from the additional teams the opportunity to compete in a Grand Tour," the UCI said in a statement.
The Grand Tour organisers can now confirm their final wild card invitations to end the uncertainty for the teams. The start of the Giro d'Italia is just five weeks away.
Israel-Premier Tech and Lotto earned automatic invites to the 2025 Grand Tours as the top two ProTeams of 2024. After Lotto opted to forgo the Corsa Rosa, the Giro organisers could invite four wildcard teams. Tudor and Q36.5 are the top contenders, along with Polti-VisitMalta and VF Group-Bardiani CSF-Faizanè.
The Vuelta a España organisers will have to decide between the Spanish ProTeams Kern Pharma, Euskaltel-Euskadi, Burgos BH-Burpellet and Caja Rural-Seguros RGA and probably Q36.5 and Uno-X Mobility.
The UCI reiterated its "commitment to the preservation of sporting equity and the primacy of sporting merit" and so asked the PCC to study increasing the number of compulsory invitations to the Grand Tours from two to three, while returning to two wild card invitations. This would mean future Grand Tours would include 23 teams each year.
The request for a 23rd team originally came from race organisers. There were some concerns about safety due to the increasing size of the peloton from 176 riders to 184, while some of the so-called 'super teams' were against the idea of letting smaller teams take part in the Tour de France despite having much smaller budgets.
There were also concerns that allowing an additional team in the Grand Tours would impact the fight for UCI ranking points and so the places in the 2026 WorldTour and the 2026 Grand Tours.
