2026 Vuelta winners and disappointments: Mas’ redemption, Brennan’s brilliance and Lidl-Trek’s barren campaign

Some riders turned opportunity into the biggest results of their careers. Others discovered just how quickly a Grand Tour can unravel. And one modest hotel in the Pyrenees somehow became part of cycling folklore.

So, who were the biggest winners and disappointments of the 2026 Vuelta?

Who else could we possibly start with?

For years, Enric Mas had been cycling's nearly man. Three times second at the Vuelta, four times on its final podium, always close enough to make victory seem realistic but never close enough to actually wear red on the final day.

In 2026, that finally changed.

Yes, Mas inherited the race lead when Tadej Pogacar crashed out on stage 8. But anyone suggesting his eventual victory was simply the product of Pogacar's misfortune did not watch the following two weeks closely enough.

Mas immediately raced like a man determined to prove the jersey belonged to him. On Alto de Aitana the following day, he won the stage and put 1:18 into Primož Roglič. On Calar Alto, he attacked again, extending his advantage. And when Roglic was expected to claw back significant time in the stage 18 time trial, Mas limited his losses to just 33 seconds.

By the decisive mountain stage in the Sierra Nevada, Mas had turned the opportunity in front of him into a position of control. On the final climbs, none of his rivals could dislodge him.

He arrived in Granada 2:15 clear of Roglič to become the first Spanish winner of the Vuelta since Alberto Contador in 2014 and, at 31, a Grand Tour winner at last.

Contador perhaps summed it up best as Mas closed in on victory: “It's no gift, it's thanks to his hard work.”

After so many years of coming close, Mas did not just win the Vuelta. He changed the story of his career.

If Mas supplied the Vuelta's great redemption story, Matthew Brennan delivered its biggest glimpse of the future.

The 21 year old arrived at his first Grand Tour without a single three week race in his legs. He left Spain with five stage victories.

Five.

Brennan won stages 2, 5, 11, 16 and 17, repeatedly proving himself the fastest man in the race while demonstrating a level of consistency that is remarkable for a rider of his age. His fifth victory in Sevilla made him the youngest rider ever to reach five Grand Tour stage wins.

What made Brennan’s Vuelta so impressive, though, was not just the victories, but the way he raced.

He appeared remarkably comfortable even when the finales became more selective, and on stage 13 and again on the final day he showed that there is far more to his game than pure speed.

“I love to race like that, you know, being up at the front end,” Brennan said after stage 21. “I think these days are kind of where I get the opportunity to show that.”

It was another reminder of why Visma see Brennan as much more than a fast finisher, with the team particularly excited about what he could become in the Classics.

Two stage victories. The green jersey. The super combativity prize. And one of the best lead out riders in the race, despite being one of its biggest stars himself.

Wout van Aert's Vuelta was a reminder of the extraordinary number of different ways in which he can influence a bike race.

He attacked in the mountains, hunted intermediate sprint points, worked for Brennan and still found enough opportunities to win twice himself. His first victory came from the breakaway on stage 13, when he attacked with 3.6 kilometres remaining before beating Valentin Paret-Peintre. Two days later, he won again in Córdoba.

Perhaps the most impressive element was how comfortably Van Aert switched between star and servant.

Visma sports director Maarten Wynants called him “the best teammate you can wish for”, noting that Van Aert could conceivably have won stages that instead went to Brennan.

In Granada, he stood on the final podium with the green jersey and the award for the most combative rider of the race.

For a rider whose 2024 Vuelta ended painfully in a crash while he was leading both the points and mountains classifications, this felt like unfinished business emphatically completed.

For almost anyone else, finishing second at the Vuelta would be an obvious success.

For a four time winner of the race, it normally would not be.

But Primož Roglič's 2026 Vuelta needs some context.

At the end of July, Roglič was hit by a car while training at altitude. The injuries were serious enough that, in his own words, he initially could not even think about sitting down, let alone riding a bike. Red Bull later estimated that the accident cost him around ten crucial days of preparation before the Vuelta.

“Instead of preparation, I did rehabilitation,” Roglič said.

That made what followed rather remarkable.

The 36-year-old entered the race unsure of what level he could reach, yet spent almost the entire Vuelta inside the top three. When Tadej Pogačar's withdrawal suddenly opened up the battle for red, Roglič became one of the main contenders for overall victory.

He never quite found the climbing level required to beat Enric Mas. The Spaniard repeatedly took small chunks of time in the mountains and Roglič was unable to launch the decisive attack Red Bull had hoped for on the final mountain stage.

But he kept himself in contention until the final weekend.

His fourth place in the stage 18 time trial moved him back into second overall, with Red Bull describing it afterwards as one of the best time trials of his career. He eventually reached Granada 2:15 behind Mas and ahead of Felix Gall, securing the ninth Grand Tour podium of his career and his sixth at the Vuelta.

For a rider who arrived in Monaco after a preparation dominated by injury and rehabilitation, that changed the meaning of second place.

“Second place is like a victory for me in this case,” Roglič said after the finish. “We did our best day after day, and Enric was just better.”

Coming from a man who has won this race four times, that probably says everything.

Remember the name.

Jakob Omrzel started the Vuelta at 20-years-old and without a Grand Tour appearance to his name. He finished it as a Grand Tour stage winner.

The Slovenian produced one of the rides of the race on stage 12 to Calar Alto. Having escaped earlier in the day, Omrzel went clear on the final climb and simply never came back, eventually winning by almost two minutes.

The statistic that puts the performance into perspective is almost absurd: Omrzel was younger when he won his first Grand Tour stage than Tadej Pogačar had been when he won his at the 2019 Vuelta.

It was not simply a lucky day from the break either. The result moved him up to sixth overall, a position he managed to hold deep into the final week, further underlining why Bahrain Victorious regard him as one of the major talents of the next generation.

And we all know what became of the last young Slovenian to announce himself to the world at the Vuelta.

There cannot be many one star hotels that have emerged from a Grand Tour with more positive publicity than some of cycling's biggest sponsors.

Stage 3 was supposed to deliver the first summit finish of the Vuelta. Instead, an enormous hailstorm hit the race close to the Col de Mont Louis. Roads rapidly turned white, riders were pelted by hailstones and the stage was abandoned with around 15 kilometres remaining.

What followed produced some of the images of the race.

Around 180 riders suddenly piled into the nearby IGESA Village Club Mont Louis Les Sorbiers looking for shelter. Staff responded with towels, hot drinks, fruit and whatever space they could find. Soon Pogačar, Van Aert and much of the peloton were standing around inside a modest Pyrenean hotel alongside bemused guests and cycling fans.

Then came the reviews.

Riders flooded the hotel with five star ratings. Magnus Cort, the peloton's unofficial hotel critic, went one better.

“7 out of 7 for this hotel,” he wrote, praising the hot tea, sweets, fruit, towels and space that had been made available at virtually no notice.

Hotel manager Guillaume Villeneuve later explained it simply: “We did it with our heart and with a lot of pleasure.”

A cancelled stage normally leaves very little worth remembering. This one created a piece of cycling folklore.

Not every story from this Vuelta ended quite so well.

For some, three weeks of ambition brought little reward. For others, everything changed in a single moment.

These were the biggest disappointments of the 2026 Vuelta.

It feels slightly ridiculous to include Tadej Pogačar among the disappointments after watching him win three stages in the opening week.

But there is no bigger example from this Vuelta of how quickly a Grand Tour can take something away.

Pogačar had looked ominously strong. He was already in red, had won three stages and appeared on course to control another three week race when everything changed on stage 8.

On what should have been a relatively straightforward sprint day, Pogačar lost control 32 kilometres from the finish and crashed heavily. His UAE teammates waited, but he never made it back onto the bike. He left for hospital with his left arm in a sling.

With that, his chance of completing the set of victories in all three Grand Tours disappeared too. Having already won the Tour de France and Giro d’Italia, the Vuelta remains the one missing piece.

Teammate Pavel Sivakov later explained that Pogačar had been drinking when he hit a small object on the road and lost his balance. The entire UAE team crossed the finish more than eleven minutes later.

There was no tactical error to analyse and no performance collapse to explain.

Sometimes, the biggest disappointment of a Grand Tour is simply when cycling itself gets in the way.

Pogačar's crash did not only transform his Vuelta. It effectively reset UAE's entire race.

This was a team constructed around the overwhelming favourite for the general classification. On stage 8, that objective disappeared.

The image of UAE's seven remaining riders crossing the line together, more than eleven minutes down and visibly deflated, told the story. None of them was remotely close enough on GC to simply inherit Pogačar's leadership role.

Their response was admirable. Sivakov said the new objective was to chase stages, while Kevin Vermaerke said the team had to “be super aggressive and try and make him proud.”

At the Giro, UAE had already faced a similar situation after a mass crash on stage 2 ended the races of Jay Vine and Marc Soler, while leader Adam Yates was unable to start the following day.

Their response then had been overwhelming. Jhonatan Narváez went on to win three stages, while Igor Arrieta added a fourth victory for the team.

When Pogačar left the Vuelta, there was every reason for the rest of the peloton to fear a similar reaction.

This time, though, it never came.

Pavel Sivakov, Kevin Vermaerke, Ivo Oliveira and João Almeida all appeared in breakaways, but none managed to turn those opportunities into a victory or seriously impose themselves on the race.

Few teams can lose the best rider in the world and simply carry on as planned. Not even UAE.

Lidl-Trek arrived with too many good riders to leave Spain without a stage win.

Yet that is exactly what happened.

Their two main leaders, Mads Pedersen and Mattias Skjelmose, had both come through a demanding Tour de France and neither appeared to reach the Vuelta in ideal condition. For Pedersen, illness eventually brought his race to an early end, with the Dane withdrawing before stage 11.

Skjelmose made it all the way to Granada, but after finishing an impressive sixth at the Tour, his Vuelta was far more subdued. He spent much of the race around the top ten before fading to 13th overall in the final days. The accumulated fatigue proved costly beyond Spain too, with Skjelmose subsequently withdrawing from the World Championships, admitting: “My body can’t take it anymore.”

There were still opportunities.

Pedersen came closest on stage 8, where Bryan Coquard denied him in the sprint, while he had also finished fourth on stage 2. Thibau Nys twice threatened to rescue the team’s race, taking third on stage 10 and again behind Wout van Aert in Córdoba on stage 15.

But the final number is the one that matters most: zero stage victories.

For plenty of teams, a handful of near misses and a rider inside the top 15 might constitute a respectable Vuelta.

For a squad with Lidl-Trek’s depth, resources and ambitions, it felt like considerably less.