Unibet Rose Rockets will ride a Grand Tour in 2026 as Giro d'Italia names teams and wildcards
Tudor and Pinarello-Q36.5 included in line-up for race starting in Bulgaria, as Cofidis decline automatic invitation
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The Giro d'Italia organisers have announced the 23 squads for this year's race, which starts on May 8 in Nessebar, Bulgaria and finishes in Rome on May 31, most notably granting a Grand Tour debut to Unibet Rose Rockets.
The 18 WorldTour squads automatically qualify for the event, but the five teams from the ProTeam league had yet to be revealed by the Giro, the last of the three Grand Tours to publish their full line-up for 2026.
The three top ProTeams from 2025 are automatically invited to all WorldTour events this year, but Cofidis appear to have turned down their invite to the Giro, meaning there was an extra wildcard spot available, which have been hotly contested across the Grand Tours in 2026.
The stand-out name amongst the Giro's three wildcards is undoubtedly Unibet Rose Rockets. Despite having multiple Grand Tour stage winners in their line-up, Unibet were not selected by the Tour de France last month for the 2026 Grande Boucle – a decision which brought mixed reactions – with Spanish team Caja Rural-Seguros RGA getting the nod instead.
However, the ProTeam will get a Grand Tour start this May, meaning riders like top sprinter Dylan Groenewegen and veteran climbing ace Wout Poels will get the chance to shine in front of Italian fans early this summer.
More unsurprisingly, two longstanding Italian-registered ProTeams, Bardiani-CSF 7 Saber and Polti-VisitMalta, are both present in the 2026 race, whilst Swiss-based teams Tudor and Pinarello-Q36.5 both accepted their automatic invitations as the top-ranked ProTeams. All four squads were already present in the 2025 Giro d'Italia and whilst Tudor had a big stage win in 2024 with former World Champion Julian Alaphilippe, Polti were also successful back in 2023 with Davide Bais on the well-known ascent of Gran Sasso.
Giro d'Italia 2026 teams
- Alpecin-Premier Tech (WT)
- Bahrain Victorious (WT)
- Decathlon CMA CGM (WT)
- EF Education-EasyPost (WT)
- Groupama-FDJ United (WT)
- Ineos Grenadiers (WT)
- Lidl-Trek (WT)
- Lotto Intermarché (WT)
- Movistar (WT)
- NSN Cycling (WT)
- Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe (WT)
- Soudal-QuickStep (WT)
- Jayco AlUla (WT)
- Picnic PostNL (WT)
- Visma-Lease a Bike (WT)
- UAE Team Emirates-XRG (WT)
- Uno-X Mobility (WT)
- XDS Astana (WT)
- Pinarello-Q36.5 (PRT) – automatic invitation
- Tudor Pro Cycling (PRT) – automatic invitation
- Bardiani-CSF 7 Saber (PRT) – wildcard invitation
- Polti VisitMalta (PRT) – wildcard invitation
- Unibet Rose Rockets (PRT) – wildcard invitation
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Alasdair Fotheringham has been reporting on cycling since 1991. He has covered every Tour de France since 1992 bar one, as well as numerous other bike races of all shapes and sizes, ranging from the Olympic Games in 2008 to the now sadly defunct Subida a Urkiola hill climb in Spain. As well as working for Cyclingnews, he has also written for The Independent, The Guardian, ProCycling, The Express and Reuters.
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