Five riders ready for a breakthrough in the 2026 WorldTour season

As the 2026 campaign draws closer, a handful of young men look ready to make that jump. Some have already brushed the top level, others are just waiting for a first full season in the WorldTour. All of them have the legs and trajectory to turn promise into something more concrete over the next twelve months.

Jarno Widar has enjoyed the kind of apprenticeship that development teams dream of. Across 2024 and 2025 he learned his trade with Lotto’s under-23 squad and collected results that looked less like learning and more like winning. 

Multiple stage victories at the Giro Next Gen and the Tour de l’Avenir, the under-23 European road race title, and Liège–Bastogne–Liège U23 all found their way onto his palmarès before he even signed a full professional contract.

It is a big ask to deliver a true breakthrough in a first-year WorldTour season, but Widar already rides with the composure and range of someone older. Lotto–Intermarché will need that from day one. 

It would not be a surprise to see him burst onto the scene with a standout result in 2026, particularly in one-week stage races. If he gets the chance at a Grand Tour start, a tilt at the young-rider classification feels like a natural next step.

The 22-year-old Brit from Scunthorpe in Lincolnshire came within touching distance of a career-changing result at the 2025 Giro d’Italia. He finished 11th overall, closing hard on the top ten in the final week and proving that three-week racing is already within his reach.

That experience will only sharpen his appetite. With compatriot and Picnic PostNL teammate Oscar Onley riding to an unexpected fourth at the 2025 Tour de France, Poole has a clear template close to home for what a rapid leap in Grand Tour standing can look like. Match his 2025 Giro level and a top ten in the Italian race, or perhaps in the Vuelta, is a realistic target.

The signs have been there for a while. Poole’s best seasons so far came in 2023 and 2024, when he took fourth in the Tour de Romandie general classification and seventh overall at the UAE Tour. The question for 2026 is not whether he can climb with the sport’s better stage-racers, but how high that consistency can take him over three weeks.

It never quite clicked for Luke Lamperti at Soudal Quick-Step. The young American arrived in Belgium with a strong reputation and the tools to become a force in fast, nervous one-day races, but the fit was not perfect and the breakthrough never really came. For 2026 he starts again at EF Education–EasyPost, and that change of environment might be exactly what he needs.

The raw material is not in doubt. In 2025 Lamperti showed glimpses of his potential against WorldTour fields, sprinting to second at the pan-flat Bredene Koksijde Classic on the Belgian coast and third at Danilith Nokere Koerse. 

These are the kind of races that suit his blend of speed and positioning. With a fresh calendar and a team built around opportunistic racing, a first major win in this terrain feels well within reach in 2026.

Pierre Gautherat has been circling a big result for some time. His career so far is dotted with high finishes in tough one day races, especially in France, where the roads are hard and the margins even harder. 

Tro Bro Léon, brutal and beautiful in equal measure, has been his best shop window, with second and third place finishes showing just how well he handles rough terrain and attrition.

A possible turning point arrived in 2025 with his first professional victory, a stage at the 4 Jours de Dunkerque. A win changes more than a results sheet. It alters how a rider sees opportunities, and how a team races for them. 

In 2026, for Decathlon CMA CGM, expect to see Gautherat near the sharp end of a number of cobbled and mixed surface races. He has spent long enough learning how to be in the front group. The next step is learning how to finish it off.

For some observers António Morgado already had a breakout year as a first season professional in 2024. His fifth place at the Tour of Flanders was the headline performance, a result that would be career defining for many riders. The detail that still nags is the absence of a WorldTour victory. That is the box he will be eager to tick in 2026.

The main obstacle is not talent but opportunity. Morgado rides for the star packed, Galactico style roster of UAE Team Emirates XRG, where chances for personal ambition can be limited. Whenever he does receive freedom, though, he tends to make himself visible. 

With another winter of development behind him, he has all the skills needed to turn those appearances into a win.

Keep an eye out for Morgado in one day races next season. Whether on Flanders roads or in other selective classics, he looks primed to be in the fight for the top positions once more, this time with the clear goal of converting promise into a first big triumph.