Over 500 wins leave the peloton as cycling's stars retire in 2026

34 riders racing in either the Men's WorldTour or for a ProTeam have confirmed their retirement in 2026. Among them, the collective of riders have won a combined 565 professional races, based on statistics collected from FirstCycling and ProCyclingStats.

Nairo Quintana and Simon Yates are the two Grand Tour winners to retire. Quintana won the Giro d'Italia in 2014 and the Vuelta a España in 2016. Meanwhile, Yates, who announced his retirement unexpectedly ahead of the 2026 campaign, won the Giro in 2025 and the Vuelta in 2018.

Meanwhile, there are three Monument winners who have also hung up their racing wheels this year. Julian Alaphilippe, who won Milano-Sanremo in 2019, raced for the final time at the Tour de France in July. Bob Jungels, who won Liège-Bastogne-Liège in 2018, has also retired, while 2019 Il Lombardia winner Bauke Mollema has also bid farewell to the peloton.

Julian Alaphilippe: The former two-time world champion brought his illustrious career to a close in August, shortly after his eighth and final appearance at the Tour de France. Retiring at the age of 34, the Frenchman bows out with 45 victories to his name, including his two world titles, Milano-Sanremo and six Tour de France stage wins. At La Grande Boucle, Alaphilippe spent 18 days in the yellow jersey, 14 of which came in that epic 2019 edition where he led until stage 19 before finishing fifth overall, his only Grand Tour top 10 finish. 

Guillaume Boivin: The 37-year-old Canadian retires as a three-time national road race champion, having won his first title in 2009 and his most recent in 2021. The hat-trick of titles accounted for three of his five professional wins, in a career where Boivin started nine Grand Tours and 18 monuments, including seven editions of Paris-Roubaix where he finished ninth in 2021.

Geoffrey Bouchard: The 34-year-old Frenchman is part of an exclusive club of riders to win the mountains classification at multiple Grand Tours. Bouchard won the polka-dot jersey at the Vuelta a España in 2019 and added the blue jersey at the Giro d’Italia in 2021. 

Martin Urianstad Bugge: The 27-year-old Norwegian retires having been a mainstay of the Uno-X stable, coming through the development team. He made his last appearance at the Tour of Guangxi, featuring in the breakaway on the final stage.

Pello Bilbao: A class act, Bilbao finished seventh at Il Lombardia in the final race of his career, indicating he could well have carried on for 2027 and beyond if he wanted to. The 36-year-old won three Grand Tour stages, and finished in the top 10 at the Giro three times and the Tour twice.

Sven Erik Bystrøm: The former under-23 world road race champion spent his final season racing for home team, Uno-X Mobility. Bystrøm raced eight Grand Tours and 24 Monuments throughout the course of his career. 

Simon Clarke: The now-40-year-old Australian retired back in February after racing the Tour Down Under for the fifteenth time and the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race. Clarke won three Grand Tour stages in his career, spanning over a decade, and also claimed the mountains classification at the Vuelta back in 2012.

Jasper De Buyst: The 32-year-old Belgian established himself as one of Lotto’s most trusted lead-out riders and road captains since his arrival in 2015. De Buyst was a key lieutenant in the latter stages of André Greipel’s career but also picked up six victories of his own. He will stay with Lotto in 2027 in a new role as performance manager. 

Damiano Caruso: An esteemed member of the peloton, Caruso established himself as a bona fide GC contender in 2021 after years of promise. That year, he won the penultimate stage en route to finishing second overall at the Giro. The Italian would enjoy further success in his home Grand Tour, finishing fourth in 2023, fifth in 2025 and ninth this year while supporting Afonso Eulálio to sixth and the white jersey.

Odd Christian Eiking: The 31-year-old Norwegian spent his final two seasons with Unibet Rose Rockets after a career that featured three wins, five Grand Tour and 12 Monument starts. Notably, Eiking led the Vuelta for seven stages in 2021, holding the red jersey until stage 17 before finishing 11th overall.

David de la Cruz: The 37-year-old Spaniard bowed out at his home Grand Tour, the Vuelta, where he won a stage back in 2016, en route to seventh overall. He would go on to finish seventh in the 2020 and 2021 editions also. 

Luke Durbridge: Another one-team rider, Durbridge will bring to an end a 15 year stay with the GreenEdge set-up, having claimed 15 wins, raced 17 Grand Tours and 29 Monuments. Turbo Durbo technically doesn’t retire until next year, as he will race the Santos Tour Down Under one last time.

Magnus Cort: The man with the standout moustache packed a punch at the end of a hard race, and amassed 36 victories during his career, including nine Grand Tour stages and completing the set. Cort's final victory came in June when he won the Danish road race title for the first time, before one last outing at both the Tour and Vuelta respectively.

Fabien Grellier: Spending his entire pro career with the TotalEnergies set-up, Grellier achieved his dream of riding the Tour de France, lining up for La Grande Boucle on four occasions. In 2020, he featured in the breakaway on a wet opening stage in Nice, earning himself a day in the polka-dot jersey.

Jesús Herrada: Alongside his brother José, who retired in 2023, Jesús Herrada animated the Grand Tours from breakaways for over a decade, winning three stages at the Vuelta as part of 21 professional wins. 

Damien Howson: Having won the Herald Sun Tour in 2017, Czech Tour in 2020 and Tour de Hongrie in 2021 as part of the GreenEdge stable, Howson joined the Pinarello team in 2023. In recent seasons, the 34-year-old Australian became a key mountain lieutenant for Tom Pidcock, supporting the Briton to his third-place finish at the Vuelta last year.

Steven Kruijswijk: A one-man team, Kruijswijk spent seventeen years with Visma, rising as a Grand Tour challenger before becoming an invaluable teammate in the twilight of his career. The 2016 Giro remains synonymous with Kruijswijk's career, the race that prompts the question of what might have been. Though it’s not the race that defines his legacy, as he finished third overall at the Tour in 2019. In his final Grand Tour appearance at the Vuelta in September, Kruijswijk was part of a Visma team that racked up an emphatic seven stage wins, a fine way to bow out.

Jonas Hem Hvideberg: After rising through the development team, Hvideberg turned pro with Uno-X in 2020, the year he became under-23 European road race champion. The 27-year-old Norwegian raced the Giro, Vuelta, Paris-Roubaix and Il Lombardia during his career. 

Oliver Le Gac: The 33-year-old French turned professional with FDJ in 2014 and remained with the team for his entire career, racing 11 Grand Tours, and 19 Monuments in the red and blue colours. 

Alexey Lutsenko: A two-time Asian Games champion, Lutsenko enjoyed a distinguished career with 43 victories, including a stage of the Tour in 2020. In 2021, he finished seventh at La Grande Boucle, before taking eighth the following year. 

Bauke Mollema: You’ll be hard-pushed to find too many riders with longevity like Mollema. The Dutchman turned pro back in 2008 and would go on to start 23 Grand Tours, including the 2011 Vuelta, where he finished third. Mollema also became a Monument winner, soloing to victory at Il Lombardia in 2019, and he fittingly ended his career at the race of the falling leaves, finishing a record-breaking seventeenth edition. 

Ion Izagirre: The 37-year-old Basque rider established himself as one of the most underrated riders in the peloton during a career in which he claimed 20 victories, including three Grand Tour stages. Even in his final season, Izagirre still remained in the upper echelons of the peloton, and secured a record-equalling third GP Miguel Indurain. He made his farewell at Il Lombardia despite fracturing his left wrist in a training crash less than two weeks prior.

Lorrenzo Manzin: An underrated fastman who accrued top-10 stage finishes in three out of four Vuelta starts, including a second-place finish on the final stage in Madrid in 2017. 

Rudy Molard: The punchy French rider has been with FDJ since 2018, and retires having started 17 Grand Tours and 23 Monuments. Molard won a stage at Paris-Nice in his first season with the French team and is a two-time top 10 finisher at Il Lombardia.

Nairo Quintana: A two-time Grand Tour champion, Quintana quickly established himself as one of the best riders of his generation, winning the Giro in 2014 and the Vuelta in 2016. While his great rivals of the previous era have already hung up their wheels, the Colombian continued his career into the 2020s, spending the final years of his career in his second spell with Movistar. Quintana's 52nd and 53rd pro wins came when he won a stage and the GC at the Vuelta Asturias in April. He bid farewell at the Giro dell'Emilia, the site of one of his victories in his debut season with the Spanish team in 2012.

Luka Mezgec: Having won a stage of the Giro in 2014 for Giant Shimano, the 38-year-old Slovenian has spent the last decade with Jayco AlUla, and has raced 16 Grand Tours and 22 Monuments during his career. He made an emotional farewell on home roads in Slovenia at the European Championships, where Tadej Pogačar was in support and paid tribute calling Mezgec an “idol and mentor.”

Jacopo Mosca: The 33-year-old Italian rose through the Italian continental ranks before earning a move to Lidl-Trek in 2019. Mosca rode his eighth and final Grand Tour earlier this year at the Vuelta, before bowing out at Gran Piemonte. 

Robin Orins: The 24-year-old Belgian called time on his career early as a professional after physical and mental struggles. Orins raced both Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Il Lombardia during his pro spell with Lotto.

Simon Yates: The 2025 Giro and 2018 Vuelta champion announced his sudden and unexpected retirement at the start of this year, and thus didn't race in 2026. Yates brought to an end a glittering career that saw him claim 36 wins, including 11 Grand Tour stages and 2 GC victories, capped off with his remarkable remontada on the slopes of the Colle delle Finestre in May 2025.

Joseph Pidcock: The 24-year-old Briton spent two years with Pinarello-Q36.5 after coming through the Trinity racing ranks. Pidcock made his final appearance for the Swiss ProTeam at the Tour of Guangxi alongside his brother Tom who finished second overall.

Ben Swift: A founding member of the Sky project in 2010, Swift proved himself as a fast finisher in the earlier stages of his career, earning a plethora of victories, including stages at the Tour Down Under, Tour de Romandie and Tour de Pologne. After a two-year pit-stop at UAE in 2017 and 2018, Swift returned to the British team where he would go on to win the British title back-to-back in 2019 and 2021 (2020 cancelled due to COVID), and establish himself as an exceptional road captain.

Max Walscheid: The German powerhouse shone in both the Classics and time trials, picking up 14 professional victories. He raced eight Grand Tours from 2018 to 2026, and his worst best result in any of them was 12th. In his final season, racing for Lidl-Trek, Walscheid sprinted to victory from a group of 10 to win a stage at the ZLM Tour.  

Bram Welten: The 29-year-old Dutchman hasn’t raced since the Copenhagen Sprint in 2025, but officially announced his retirement this week due to suffering from the impact of a fractured L5 vertebra. Welten was part of Picnic’s Tour squad in 2024 that took the yellow jersey on the opening stage with Romain Bardet.

12 riders have confirmed their retirements for 2026 in the Women's WorldTour and ProTeam divisions. 

The riders have won a collective 103 races, including stages of the Giro d'Italia, cobbled Classics and many national titles. 

Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio has claimed the most victories, with 49, followed by Alena Amialiusik with 23 and Amanda Spratt with 21. 

Alena Amialiusik: The Belarusian announced her retirement after 15 years at the top level, racing for the likes of Canyon and UAE. Amialiusik won the first edition of the European Games road race in Baku in 2015, beating Kasia Niewidoma and Anna van der Breggen.

Alice Maria Arzuffi: The 31-year-old Italian called time on her 14-year professional career, which specialised in road, cyclocross and gravel. Racing for Laboral Kutxa-Fundación Euskadi in her final race, Arzuffi's final race on the road came at the Vuelta España in May.

Olivia Baril: The 2024 Canadian road race champion called time on her career after a year disrupted by a herniated disc. Baril retired on home soil, having competed in the World Championships, hosted in Montréal.

Tiffany Cromwell: The Australian confirmed her retirement from the road back in September, but bid farewell at the UCI Gravel World Championships in Nannup. Cromwell won two stages of the Giro d'Italia and Omloop Nieuwsblad among six pro victories on the road.

Sofia Bertizzolo: A former junior European road race champion, Bertizzolo retires after spending her final season in the colours of FDJ United-Suez. Bertizzolo won three professional races and finished second at the Trofeo Alfredo Binda in 2022 and 4th at the Tour of Flanders back in 2019. 

Kim Cadzow: Cadzow announced her early retirement in July after explaining that riding her bike began to feel "more and more like punishment." The 24-year-old Kiwi became national champion in 2025 and had previously finished fifth at Liège-Bastogne-Liège in 2024 and 10th in the Vuelta España in the same year. 

Alana Castrique: The 27-year-old Belgian brings to an end her career, which started at Lotto Soudal Ladies, followed by Cofidis, and rounded out with two seasons at AG Insurance-Soudal. Castrique claimed bronze in the Belgian road race championships in 2021. 

Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio: After initially planning to retire at the end of 2022, the two-time Giro d'Italia runner-up has enjoyed a four-year renaissance in the twilight of her career. Moolman-Pasio racked up an impressive 49 victories during her career, including the Tour de Romandie in 2022 and becoming a five-time African road race champion. 

Elena Cecchini: The three-time Italian road race champion made her final appearance on the road at the Eneco Tour earlier this month. Having spent the majority of her career racing for Canyon and SD Worx, the 2019 European road race silver medalist was a vastly underrated rider.  

Amanda Spratt: The Australian climber closed out her distinguished career at Tre Valli Varesine after a season that included participation at both the Giro and Tour. Spratt holds the record for most GC victories at the Santos Women's Tour, finished second at the Worlds and Liège in 2018, and is also a two-time Giro podium finisher.

Claire Steels: The British climber was a latecomer to the pro peloton, having run her own business in the fitness industry. Steels established a home at Movistar over the last three seasons, a year after claiming her first pro victory at reVolta while racing for Israel Premier Tech Roland.

Anne Dorthe Ysland: The 24-year-old Norwegian raced in the home colours of Uno-X Mobility since 2022 and ended her career after a chronic struggle with ulcerative colitis. Ysland's final appearance came back in January at the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race.