Two kings, one history book: Van der Poel and Pogacar’s 2026 record hunt

Since 2023, Van der Poel and Pogačar have ruled the biggest one-day races. Sixteen of the last eighteen Monuments and World Championships went to one of them. There is little reason to think 2026 will suddenly look very different, even if a fully fit Remco Evenepoel has the tools to break their grip.

Beyond that head-to-head in the Spring Classics, Pogačar has pushed his influence across the whole calendar. He matters in every major one-day race through sheer versatility, and in the Grand Tours he remains the man to beat.

So the question is not whether they will win in 2026. It is how much they will win, and what that does to the history books?

For Van der Poel, 2026 already came with a marker that nobody else has. In Hulst he took an eighth world title in cyclocross, breaking the long standing record of Erik De Vlaeminck and turning a shared benchmark into a solo one.

What else is there to chase at 31? The key window sits in that stretch from late March into early April, when the cobbles decide legacies.

The first ceiling is the Tour of Flanders. Van der Poel has won De Ronde three times, and nobody has ever won it four. A fourth would lift him above the crowded group of three time winners: Achiel Buysse, Fiorenzo Magni, Eric Leman, Johan Museeuw, Tom Boonen and Fabian Cancellara.

There is also a second Flanders storyline. He has finished on the podium in six straight editions. Another top three would extend his own record for consecutive podiums and bring him one step closer to the all time mark of eight podium finishes, held by Briek Schotte and Johan Museeuw.

A week later comes Paris-Roubaix, the Hell of the North, where the numbers already look unreal.

In terms of wins, he is at three. Another victory would bring him level with the four win benchmark shared by Tom Boonen and Roger De Vlaeminck, and it would also make him the first rider to win Paris-Roubaix four years in a row. Only two men have ever managed three consecutive wins, Francesco Moser and Octave Lapize. 

Hovering behind both races is the Cobbled Double, winning Flanders and Roubaix in the same year. It has happened 13 times in history, and only Boonen and Cancellara have managed it twice. Van der Poel joined that list in 2024 and could join the Belgian and the Swiss this year as a record holder.

If Van der Poel’s spring is about cobbled ceilings, Pogačar’s season is about scale. The question is no longer whether he is dominant. It is how high the totals can climb.

Start with the Grand Tours. Pogačar sits on five overall victories: four Tours de France and one Giro d’Italia. Another Tour win this summer would put him on five, alongside Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain. Lance Armstrong crossed the line first seven times in a row from 1999 to 2005, but all of those titles were stripped in 2012.

Then there is the Vuelta, the missing line on his Grand Tour record. The race openly flirts with the idea of Pogačar on the start list this year, helped by a Monaco start that lands in his backyard. Win in Spain and he completes the Grand Tour triple, joining the small group of riders who have won the Tour, the Giro and the Vuelta: Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault, Jacques Anquetil, Felice Gimondi, Alberto Contador, Vincenzo Nibali and Chris Froome. 

Pogačar's lifetime rival Jonas Vingegaard is on a parallel path, with his Giro start in May as his potential last step towards the same club.

If Pogačar can win two Grand Tours in 2026, the horizon shifts again. The career record for overall Grand Tour victories still belongs to Merckx with eleven. Pogačar has five. Two more next year would take him to seven at 27, putting him on Merckx’s pace at the same age and keeping the Cannibal’s number within range if his dominance holds across the next three seasons.

Then there are the Monuments. Pogačar sits on ten, already third on the all time list. Eddy Merckx remains the reference at nineteen, but the nearer targets are closer. Roger De Vlaeminck has eleven. One more Monument would draw Pogačar level with him. Two or more would move him clear into second and cut the gap again.

And with Pogačar winning three Monuments in 2025 and two in 2024, he is moving at a pace that could put Merckx within reach in three to four seasons. But it is the same question as with the Grand Tours: how long can this level of dominance hold?

Van der Poel sits on eight Monuments (three Paris Roubaix, three Tour of Flanders and two Milano Sanremo), but his scoring range is narrower and, compared to Pogačar, age is not on his side.

And that difference in range is where the checklist begins. Pogačar has already won Liège, Lombardia and Flanders. Milano Sanremo and Paris Roubaix remain open. Last year he became the first rider ever to finish all five Monuments on the podium. The next step is the hard one. Winning all five in a single season would be unprecedented. And only three riders in history have won all five across their careers: Rik Van Looy, Eddy Merckx and Roger De Vlaeminck. Can Pogačar move closer to that list in 2026?

At Monument level, there are records within reach for the Slovenian too. Last year, with a fifth straight win at Il Lombardia, he drew level with the legendary Fausto Coppi. Another victory in October would leave that record in his hands alone.

The Tour of Flanders offers a similar opening. A third win would move Pogačar into the top tier of multiple winners, while also blocking Van der Poel from taking sole ownership of the four win landmark.

And in Liège-Bastogne-Liège, he can chase a fourth victory, which would draw him level with Alejandro Valverde and leave him one behind the record holder, Eddy Merckx, who won it five times.

The World Championships in Montréal present another target. Pogačar holds two road titles from 2024 and 2025. A third on the hilly Canadian circuit would place him alongside Alfredo Binda, Rik Van Steenbergen, Eddy Merckx, Óscar Freire and Peter Sagan as a three time world champion.

Records are always framed as inevitabilities until a race reminds you they are not. Form breaks, luck intervenes, rivals land a perfect day. But Van der Poel and Pogačar have earned the rare position where the calendar itself looks like a sequence of record attempts. 

In 2026, the stakes are not only who wins next, but what those wins will mean when the season is over.