Five contenders for the points jersey at the 2026 Giro d'Italia

Milan is the obvious favourite and the rider everyone else has to beat. The Italian won the points jersey on his Giro debut in 2024 and is back at the race this May after Lidl-Trek swapped sprint roles with Mads Pedersen, who heads to the Tour. Crucially, that means he gets the team's full lead-out rather than splitting it.

He arrives in form. Six wins by mid-March, including a third consecutive final-stage victory at Tirreno-Adriatico, suggest the 25-year-old is on track for the kind of spring he wanted. A reworked, more aerodynamic position over the winter hints that he is still trying to find new gains rather than coasting on what already works.

He has talked openly about wanting the opening pink jersey in Bulgaria, and defending it for a day or two will burn matches that pure points hunters tend to keep in reserve. He also gets over a hill better than most sprinters of his size, which is what makes him such a good fit for this particular jersey.

The most serious challenger is the 21-year-old Frenchman. Nineteen wins in 2025, a tally beaten only by Tadej Pogačar in the men's peloton, made the case in the most direct way possible. This is his second Giro rather than his first, which is more important than it sounds. His 2025 debut yielded three top-10 sprint finishes before he abandoned on stage 16, an experience he has framed as a step forward rather than a setback. He arrives this May with the lessons of three Grand Tour weeks already in his legs and a Soudal Quick-Step team built around him.

The reasonable doubt is durability rather than speed. He hasn't yet finished a three-week race, and the Giro's Italian finishes punish anyone who is half a wheel out of position in the final kilometre. If he survives the first ten days, the jersey is genuinely up for grabs. If he doesn't, the points table tilts back toward Milan very quickly.

Groves is the most experienced points-classification rider in the field. He finished second in the maglia ciclamino classification in 2024 with 225 points, behind Milan, and has won two Vuelta points jerseys, in 2023 and 2024, with three stage wins in each race. There is no question that he can do this over three weeks. 

The question is whether he gets to the start line in shape. A knee injury cost him roughly two months of racing, with Alpecin-Premier Tech expecting him back at the Giro after a high-altitude training block. The team needs that to come together: he is their best card for the race, and they are not bringing a backup of his calibre.

His value is the consistency. Groves is the rider who finishes fifth when he doesn't win, the rider who survives the medium-mountain days, and the rider who is still in the bunch on stage 18. If Milan and Magnier split the wins between them, Groves is best placed to pick up the scraps and arrive in Rome with the jersey.

The 23-year-old Dane has been one of the breakout sprinters of the 2026 spring, riding as Decathlon CMA CGM's protected man for bunch finishes. He arrives at his first Giro on the back of consistent results against full sprint fields rather than scrappy wins in second-tier races.

What he has going for him is the team. Decathlon have built a properly structured lead-out, with the willingness to take the front rather than freelance off other trains. That kind of support is often what separates first-time Grand Tour sprinters who win a stage from those who never make the front of the bunch.

His ceiling is a stage win and a top-three in the points classification. His floor is the same problem every Grand Tour debutant faces: the second week, when cumulative fatigue starts to bite and chaotic Italian finishes punish anyone out of position. If he handles that, he is a real outsider for the jersey rather than a name padding the start list.

The veteran Dutchman is the most pure-speed name on this list. On his day, in a clean finish, very few riders in this race can come past him. He has already taken four wins in the early part of 2026, including the Ronde van Brugge, which became Unibet Rose Rockets' first ever WorldTour victory. 

The team are an interesting variable. Built up from Bas Tietema's YouTube-era project, the Rockets have been assembling a sprint structure around Groenewegen, with Marcel Kittel brought in as part of the performance staff. They are a step down in resources from Lidl-Trek or Soudal Quick-Step, but the lead-out has been working.

The historical pattern with Groenewegen is that he wins one or two stages and then slides off the leaderboard as the climbs bite. As a stage hunter he is a serious threat. As a points jersey contender he probably needs the favourites in front of him to crash, sicken, or run out of legs.

• The main GC favourites for the 2026 Giro d'Italia
• Five contenders for the youth classification at the 2026 Giro d'Italia
• Five favourites for the King of the Mountains at the 2026 Giro d'Italia