After a brilliant start to the season by Astana, Uno-X has joined the comeback spirit in the March classics. It will remain difficult for Uno-X or Astana to close a gap of more than 2,000 points, but their trend is much better than that of Cofidis and Picnic, so the ranking is likely to continue to compress in the coming weeks.
2023-2025 UCI Ranking
As you can see in the chart, Team Picnic PostNL has become the team on the brink of relegation, overtaken by Cofidis. In the relegation zone, Astana and Uno-X have cut over 1,000 points off the top18 during March alone, putting them just over 2,000 from salvation for Astana and promotion for Uno-X. In the first 3 three months of the year, Astana has already cut their deficit by more than half, going from 4,720 points behind at the start of the year to 2,267 points today. For its part, Arkéa continues to fall and its relegation from the WorldTour is now practically certain.
Astana continues with a very positive trend, despite having to deal with a hard crash of Christian Scaroni in Strade Bianche, which has forced him to miss also Milano-Torino and Settimana Coppi e Bartali. Their classics team has been very poor in the last couple of years, with opening weekend no different, last week they managed top-10 finishes in Brugge-De Panne, E3 Harelbeke and Gent-Wevelgem, with Kanter, Teunissen and Ballerini respectively. Astana has scored an average of 110 UCI points in each of the 29 one-day races it has contested so far.
Uno-X has shone even brighter in the March classics, starting with Wærenskjold’s win in Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, plus Cort’s 6th places in Strade and Sanremo, Tobias Johannessen’s 3rd in Milano-Torino, Blikra’s 5th in Brugge-De Panne and Kristoff’s 4th in Gent-Wevelgem. In addition, Blika also took the win at La Roue Tourangelle and young Fredheim has regularly been in the top10 in smaller one-day races. The depth of the Uno-X squad is one of the keys to this great start to the season, with the Scandinavian squad having 2.5 times the points in 2025 as they did at this point of the year in 2024.
The strong performances of Astana and Uno-X are increasing nervousness at Cofidis. A few weeks ago, L’Équipe published a report that was highly critical of team manager Cédric Vasseur’s behavior. “It may happen that the manager gets angry with a team rider because he hasn’t scored UCI points, even though he’s there mainly to work for the others. Or that he takes screenshots of top10s or compositions of breakaways where there is no Cofidis to send them to the riders in WhatsApp groups with three big smileys laughing”, according to L’Èquipe.
The pressure for UCI points at Cofidis was evident in the last kilometer of the E3 Harelbeke, when Aimé De Gendt had to push as hard as possible in the chasing group to avoid being caught by the peloton, sacrificing his chances to sprint for 4th place (he was eventually 7th). At the moment, Milan Fretin is leading the team with 508 UCI points, although he crashed in Brugge-De Panne, having to withdraw from Gent-Wevelgem as well, with bruises all over his body.
In Picnic, the only good news is the performance of Nils Eekhoff, who won Nokere Koerse (1.Pro) and was 3rd in Bredene Koksijde (1.Pro) two days later, scoring 325 points. Also Pavel Bittner finished three times in the top5 in stages of the Volta a Catalunya, but he barely scored 70 points, as the stages are not too profitable in terms of UCI points. However, in the WorldTour classics they have been missing and for example they did not score in Milano-Sanremo nor in E3 Harelbeke, something surprising considering that the top 60 finishers of these big races score points.
In an interview on Eurosport at the end of February, Warren Barguil explained about Team Picnic’s philosophy that “it’s more about winning first than thinking about points. It’s always the sporting aspect first before really thinking about points”. While this denotes great confidence in the team’s riders, who aim for big goals, it is also a risky strategy especially if the leaders get injured. This early season, Max Poole suffered a broken collarbone at Strade Bianche, Romain Bardet has shoulder issues after his crash in the Volta ao Algarve and Fabio Jakobsen will be out for several months with an iliac artery problem. Picnic will probably have to change this mentality and add more minor races to their calendar in the second half of the season.
2025 Ranking
In the 2025 season ranking, UAE Emirates continues to dominate by a wide margin, with Astana in third position. At the bottom end, we see Arkéa and Lotto. Fortunately for Lotto, the Belgian team has secured promotion to the WorldTour after two good seasons in 2023 and 2024, so they are not feeling the pressure for UCI points this year, in a difficult season for Arnaud De Lie and after the unexpected departure of Maxim van Gils.
Also worrying is Intermarché’s start to the season, 16th in the three-year period and 21st this season. Although they have a wider margin to the relegation zone than Cofidis and Picnic, the Belgian team’s performance has been poor this season so far. It is the only WorldTeam yet to win in 2025 and its margin with relegation has fallen from 4,443 points to 3,571. In 2024, it was the WorldTeam most dependent on its leader, with Biniam Girmay scoring 35.5% of the team’s points. That exceptional 2024 season by Biniam (3,352 points) is giving them peace of mind now, but they should improve to stay out of trouble.
In the interactive chart below, you can see the UCI points of all the riders of the 23 big teams currently.
2026 Wildcards
This Monday, the UCI has approved the increase to 23 teams in the Grand Tours, one more than the last seasons. With the rule change, this season the two wildcards on sporting merit are maintained and three discretionary wildcards are given to the organisers. However, from next season it could change to three wildcards to the Grand Tours on sporting merit and two for the organisers.
For the sporting merit wildcard ranking, the teams that will be ProTeams in 2026 are taken into account. At the moment, Astana would have the wildcards to the WorldTour in case of relegation, while Uno-X would get the second wildcard. Tudor right now would only be invited to the one-day races, but is well positioned if a third wildcard for sporting merit is eventually added to the Grand Tours.
The situation is more dramatic for Arkéa, which is not being able to keep up with Uno-X, Tudor and Q36.5, so it is highly likely that next season it will be ProTeam without wildcards to the WorldTour. That would also be the case for Cofidis or Picnic if they are relegated, as they currently have fewer points this season than Uno-X and Tudor. Due to the growth of those ProTeams, relegation from the WorldTour now may be more costly than it was for Israel and Lotto in 2022.
In addition, there is a big fight among the other ProTeams to finish in the top30 of the annual team ranking, which allows them to apply for wildcards to the Grand Tours. After finishing 42nd last season, it is remarkable the improvement of Solution Tech Vini Fantini (former Corratec), which would be in the top30 ahead of the other Italian ProTeams. They have only scored 9.65% of their points in Europe, using Asia and Latin America to get easier UCI points.
Also the Unibet Tietema Rockets, which wants to participate in the Tour de France 2026, managed to enter the top30, thanks especially to the 400 UCI points of the surprising Lukáš Kubiš, winner of the Cholet Agglo Tour (1.1).
Thanks Raul, it does seem relegation may prove very costly this year!
Has there ever been any talk of the two Swiss teams (Tudor & Q36.5) merging and combining forces?
great work and charting. Picnic and possibly Intermarché are fucked. Cofidis will get it together to farm .1’s. No way they want to be competing with TotalE, Arkea, and Tietema for wild cards.