Which transfers worked in 2026, and which flopped? We analysed the data to find out the real impact of every move

Since UCI points have become so important for professional cycling teams, as the three-year totals determine which teams are eligible for the WorldTour, rider transfer have become an even more critical factor in teams' futures.

While the 2026-2027 transfers have yet to be fully completed, we can look back on which of the top acquisitions for the 2026 season have been the biggest successes and which teams suffered the most from not being able to hold onto top talent.

This year was the first of the three-year WorldTour promotion/relegation cycle, with the next relegation coming at the end of the 2028 season, and while the big-budget powerhouses like Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, UAE Team Emirates-XRG and Visma-Lease a Bike might be able to pour millions of euros into acquiring top riders, smaller teams have to be more strategic.

For teams like EF Education-EasyPost, Lotto-Intermarché, NSN and Groupama-FDJ, who were at the bottom quarter of the UCI Team Rankings, their recruitment strategy will be critical for remaining in the WorldTour as upstart ProTeams climb ahead in search of WorldTour promotion in 2029.

Teams have to be in the top 18 of the rankings, calculated by adding the points scored by each team's top 20 riders, to qualify for the WorldTour.

While it's still early days, Pinarello-Q36.5 made enormous strides toward qualifying for the WorldTour, thanks to their top rider Tom Pidcock, but also through smart signings like Quinten Hermans from Alpecin, Aimé De Gendt from Cofidis, Fred Wright from Bahrain Victorious and Chris Harper from Jayco-AlUla.

Pinarello-Q36.5 finished the season as the 12th best team and the top ProTeam of the year, with Tudor next best in 16th place. Both teams will earn automatic invitations to all of the WorldTour races including the Tour de France next year, which will help them earn even more points toward qualifying for the 2029-2031 WorldTour.

On the other side of the equation, Picnic-PostNL had an extremely worrying season. The team lost Tobias Lund Andresen, who went on to have a brilliant year for Decathlon CMA CGM, as well as GC hopeful Oscar Onley, who went to Netcompany Ineos.

Not only did Picnic-PostNl finish dead last of the WorldTour teams in the rankings, they landed in 30th of all teams - on the cusp of not even qualifying for a Grand Tour invitation if they didn't have a WorldTour license that gives them an automatic entry.

If Picnic-PostNL survive the allegations of a toxic culture and continue on toward 2029, the men's team faces a very difficult battle to climb out of the relegation zone since they are already almost 7,000 points behind 18th-placed Cofidis.

Also on the concerning side were Groupama-FDJ, who ended the year in 20th, although not so far behind 18th as to panic just yet.

NSN, too, suffered, losing five places relative to 2025 but stand to turn that around by bringing on Richard Carapaz from EF Education-EasyPost, along with Kasper Asgreen and Santiago Buitrago from Bahrain Victorious, among others.

*The graphics below are all interactive, so you can hover over the bars for more information and in some cases, change the filter to only show transfers.

Most valuable transfers

Remco Evenepoel's mid-contract move from Soudal-Quickstep to Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe was the biggest transfer news of 2025, and the German team's acquisition really paid off this season.

The Belgian had a banner season, winning the time trial titles at the UCI Road World Championships and European Championships, won two stages of the Tour de France and came second overall, won the Amstel Gold Race, GP de Québec and his fifth Clásica San Sebastián.

Evenepoel benefited greatly from a strong support crew in the Tour de France, where Jai Hindley, Maxim Van Gils, fellow Soudal departure Mattia Cattaneo, and Jan Tratnik were his main support in the mountains.

While he still couldn't match Tadej Pogačar, he did hold off the Slovenian's right-hand man Isaac del Toro to go one place better than his previous best with Soudal-Quickstep in the GC. Evenepoel scored a massive 7,191.61 points this year, with fractions coming from team time trials, and this was the most scored of any of the riders who transfered to new teams in 2026.

The second best rider was Benoit Cosnefroy, who left Decathlon for UAE Team Emirates-XRG. Cosnefroy had a solid year of shorter stage races and one-day classics, taking wins in the Coppa Sabatini and GP du Morbihan, the overall Boucles de la Mayenne, third in Amstel and fourth in La Flèche Wallonne. He didn't race any Grand Tours, but still raked in 2,355.28 points for his team.

Next up in the list was Tobias Lund Andresen who left Picnic-PostNL to join Decathlon, making the most of the switch to win the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race, a stage of the Tour Down Under and Tirreno-Adriatico, and podiums in In Flanders Field and the Copenhagen Sprint. His season might have been an even greater success had he not stopped in June after contracting the Epstein-Barr virus.

Jasper Stuyven's departure from Lidl-Trek for Soudal-Quickstep seemed to rejuvenate the 34-year-old, who claimed the podium in Paris-Roubaix - his best result in a major classic since his 2021 Milan-San Remo win. He also finished in the top 10 in San Remo, the Tour of Flanders, and three stages of the Giro, then capped the year off with second in Paris-Tours for a total of 1,903.88 points.

Of the neo-pros, Jarno Widar (Lotto-Intermarché) topped the list of incoming riders, ending the season with a bang with second behind Pogačar on stage 4 of the Vuelta and two other stage top 10s, then went on to win Tre Valli Varesine and a stage and the overall in the Tour of Guangxi to take in 1,302 points - the second highest tally of his team.

Jakob Omrzel (Bahrain Victorious) wasn't far behind, with seventh overall in the Vuelta and a spectacular stage win at Calar Alto from the breakaway. With a podium in the Tour of Slovenia and a top 10 overall in the Tour of the Alps, Omrzel ended the year with 1,046 points.

A fresh start helped Evenepoel, Cosnefroy and Stuyven in the list of most improved after transferring, with Evenepoel netting 3,064 more points this year than he did in 2025.

Cosnefroy improved by 1,970 after a 2025 season hampered by a knee injury. Slotting into the mix was Anthon Charmig, who moved from XDS Astana to Uno-X Mobility.

Charmig's move to a more familiar team culture may have been a factor behind his great season, with top 10s in the Tour Down Under GC, a stage win in the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and podiums in five late-season one-day races including the GP de Québec.

After scoring just a few hundred points with Astana, Charmig ended the year with a massive 1,396 points this year and was ranked 49th in the world. It was a fantastic season for the Dane.

Teams that won the transfer race

Which teams won the prize for best hirings? It depends a bit on how you measure the success. In terms of net total points - adding points by new arrivals minus the 2026 points scored by riders who left - Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe gained the most, largely thanks to Evenepoel, with 8,188 points.

Netcompany Ineos got great results from new hires Dorian Godon - winner of stages in Paris-Nice, Tour de Romandie and Volta a Catalunya - and Oscar Onley, who was sixth overall in the Vuelta a España among other fine results.

Pinarello-Q36.5's tally was the third highest, showing that the ambitious Swiss team are well on their way to qualifying for the WorldTour in 2029. Quinten Hermans steadily picked up points all year, with top finishes in the Renewi Tour and De Brabantse Pijl his most valuable contributions.

While Decathlon CMA CGM earned 6,217 from new arrivals like Tobias Lund Andresen from Picnic-PostNL, sprinter Olav Kooij from Visma, and Riccitello from Israel-Premier Tech, they actually lost out, because their gains did not completely offset their losses of Cosnefroy to UAE and Dorian Godon to Netcompany Ineos.

If we look at the percentage of points gained by incoming riders and ignore the total points, NSN Cycling tops the list. After changing their identity from Israel-Premier Tech, NSN Cycling earned almost 41% of their total points from incoming riders such as Biniam Girmay, Lewis Askey and Alessandro Pinarello.

Even though they ended the season with a net positive transfer score after losing Derek Gee-West to Lidl-Trek and Matthew Riccitello to Decathlon, their returning riders like Corbin Strong and Marco Frigo had relatively lacklustre seasons and the team actually fell five places in the UCI Team Rankings.

Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe had 37% of their total come from incoming riders, mainly Evenepoel but also solid results from neo-pro Luke Tuckwell - second overall in the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and leader for two stages, and Gianni Vermeersch who had a solid Classics campaign after leaving Alpecin, with fifth in Strade Bianche his most notable result.

Drilling down to perhaps the most important factor in the UCI Team Rankings is the team's position and whether it improved or fell with the team's new composition in 2026. The above graph charts the percentage of points scored by incoming riders, the team's change in rank relative to 2025 and the total points scored by new arrivals.

Pinarello-Q36.5 both had a large portion of their points come from transfers and the biggest gain in position, gaining seven places and rocketing into the top 18 at 12th.

The merger between Lotto and Intermarché was the main factor behind their rise in the rankings from 23rd and 24th for the two parent teams to 16th. Jarno Widar, who graduated from Lotto's devo team, was the top earner with his victories in Guangxi and Tre Valli Varesine.

Decathlon CMA CGM ended the year with a gain of three spots in the UCI Team Rankings thanks in large part to their young phenom Paul Seixas and reliable GC man Felix Gall, even if their net transfer value was in the negative territory.

Soudal-Quickstep, but losing Evenepoel, slid five positions to tenth place, and while they have to rebuild from here, they're not in much danger of relegation.

The same can't be said for Picnic-PostNL. This graph really emphasises their terrible year - they dropped a massive 13 spots and had very few points from incoming riders, showing no positive direction in any of the measures. They only won three races all year, and only a single WorldTour stage by Frits Biesterbos in the Tour of Guangxi.

The net total of a team's transfer strategy doesn't tell the whole story, however, because one big signing like Evenepoel can overshadow a wider roster shift that can bode well for the future. Even the average points can fall victim to the same problem of outliers.

The median score can be a better measure, unless there were very few new riders in a team.

Bahrain Victorious seem to have done well in most measures: they had a net gain of almost 2,300 points, a gain of three positions in the UCI Team Rankings going from 10th to seventh, and the highest median points per new rider.

That included performances by Giro d'Italia stage winner Alec Segaert, neo-pro Jakob Omrzel, who won a stage and finished seventh overall in the Vuelta a España, and consistent seasons from Pau Miquel and Alessandro Borgo.

Lidl-Trek, while not getting the most out of Juan Ayuso, still earned over 1,700 points from the Spaniard and almost 1,300 from Derek Gee-West, and good value from Max Walscheid and Matteo Sobrero for the second highest median score.

Once again, Picnic-PostNL are dead last, showing that their new hires just aren't paying off, with the exception of Biesterbos.

Transfer tribulations

Looking at the points scored by riders leaving a team tells an interesting story. Soudal-Quickstep of course, with Evenepoel's departure, bled out in 2026 gaining only 3,806 points from incoming riders but seeing departing riders score over 8,000 points between Evenepoel and Luke Lamperti's haul for EF Education-EasyPost.

However, between Paul Magnier and Tim Merlier, the team softened the blow, holding onto the top 10 in the team rankings.

Lotto-Intermarché suffered by losing Girmay, winner of the Clásica Almeria, a stage of the Belgium Tour and third in the Tour de France points classification with five top-10 finishes in stages. Their story is complicated by the fact that Lotto and Intermarché merged before 2026, so their departing riders' total is inflated as half the team left.

But Picnic-PostNL's total is not. They lost Lund, Onley and Kevin Vermaerke and only picked up a significant number of points from bringing Biesterbos in from the BEAT Continental team. The 24-year-old was their second-top scorer behind Pavel Bittner, who is leaving for Pinarello-Q36.5 in 2027.

There were also a few transfers that didn't quite work out as expected - with Juan Ayuso most notably struggling to match his 2025 performance with UAE Team Emirates and ending up with almost 900 fewer points than last year, but it could have been much higher had it not been for bad luck.

Ayuso abandoned after a crash in Paris-Nice, dropped out of the Itzulia Basque Country, and a viral infection forced him to miss the Ardennes Classics. He finished seventh in the Tour de France, but his problems in the early season heavily impacted his tally.

Oscar Onley and Kévin Vauquelin's totals were even more significantly lower at 1,545 and 1,409 less, respectively.

Onley traded a fourth place overall in the Tour de France last year for sixth place overall after an early crash and illness in the Vuelta. He missed the Tour because he injured his shoulder in a crash in the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. Vauquelin finished fourth in Paris-Nice but had an unremarkable Tour de France.

Fred Wright took a while to get going after switching from Bahrain Victorious to Pinarello-Q36.5 after suffering a bizarre infection due to a thorn getting stuck in his knee during a training camp in Chile but ended the season with some solid one-day race results including the British road title.

Coming next: A thorough look at the 2025-2026 UCI Women's WorldTour and ProTeams and an analysis of the 2026-2027 transfer market.

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