Ever since Fabio Jakobsen nearly died in the 2020 Tour de Pologne, professional cyclists have been calling for safer barriers along the finishes of races. In 2027, the UCI will at long last require race organisers to comply with safe barrier standards for the final 500 metres of WorldTour races.
The UCI also confirmed that a GPS tracking system will once again be in place for the Road World Championships in Montréal, and stated it will "establish protocols and a regulatory framework for the use of real-time tracking systems at races".
The need for GPS tracking was highlighted by the death of Muriel Furrer during the 2024 UCI Road World Championships in Switzerland, when she crashed off the road and was not discovered for over an hour.
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UCI President David Lappartient urged stakeholders to "move past any disagreements on certain issues and act together" after the controversies that surrounded a test of the system at the women's Tour de Romandie in 2025, with several teams refusing to comply with the test and disagreements over who supplies and operates the trackers.
GPS trackers were used for all riders during the 2025 Road World Championships in Kigali, Rwanda, but a solution for use in other races has not yet been found in 2026. The UCI seem set to change that for 2027.
The other headline safety story in Friday's UCI press release was the issue of barriers.
The horrific crash of Jakobsen during the 2020 Tour de Pologne highlighted the pressing need for strict requirements for finish line barriers after the ones used in Poland came apart upon his impact, causing life-threatening injuries to him - and a section also flew into the course, bringing down more riders.
Barriers used for cycling and other events come in several different designs. The bridge-foot barricades are made of rounded tubular steel frames with arched legs that protrude into the road. Organisers typically secure advertising boards to them in the final 100-200 metres.
Flat-footed barricades have square steel tubing and flat feet that are useful for smooth tarmac or pavements, but are less stable on uneven surfaces. Mesh barriers, typically used for cyclocross, use steel, wood or plastic posts and plastic mesh.
Since Jakobsen's crash, the Belgian company Boplan has rolled out 1.4-metre-tall wedge-shaped interlocking yellow polymer barriers that were designed specifically for professional cycling.
The UCI cracked down on the use of bridge-foot barriers after Zdenek Stybar crashed after clipping his pedal on a bridge-foot barrier in one of many similar incidents. He called for the UCI to require safer barriers in 2014.
Weeks before Michael Mørkøv sparked a mass crash in the 2016 Tour de France by hitting the foot of a barrier, the Cyclistes Professionnels Associés (CPA) called for a ban on barriers that encroach on the course.
The UCI implemented standards for barriers in 2021, that mandated there should be no gaps or feet extending into the course that could catch pedals, have continuous, smooth faces and no sudden narrowing of the road.
Now, six years after Jakobsen's crash, the UCI will add requirements that barriers meet standards regarding the dimensions of the barriers, their mechanical characteristics, their fixing systems, the way in which advertising panels are fixed to them and require impact tests for their approval, according to a 2025 press release.
The UCI stated it "wants to guarantee that the barriers used in the final hundreds of metres of stages and races, meet the standards resulting from the study carried out by the Haute École Spécialisée de Suisse Occidentale Valais-Wallis.
"This requirement will be introduced progressively, starting with UCI WorldTour and UCI Women's WorldTour races from the 2027 season, before being extended to all other race categories."
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