UCI points swing: the biggest winners and losers of the 2026 transfers

A common football phrase, “winning the transfer window,” is used to praise a team seen as having done the best business overall, though it’s a term that's hard to quantify and ultimately subjective.

In fact, 'winning the transfer window' doesn't always turn out to be a good omen either. With big spending comes pressure and increasing expectations, meaning that signing multiple big-name riders doesn’t always pan out as anticipated. Equally, there are always riders who fly under the radar, or who simply haven’t fully developed yet, who could look to be a stroke of genius in twelve months' time by those who made the decision to sign that rider.

One way to quantify the winter transfer period, at least to some extent, is through UCI points. If we use each rider’s UCI individual points rankings as of the end of December 2025 as a proxy for value, we can examine which teams have signed the most points, which have lost the most, and which have seen the biggest net swings, both positive and negative. 

Ultimately, the slate has been wiped clean, meaning that these current point tallies count for little once the racing begins, with what each rider does on the road counting significantly more, but it does provide an interesting look at which teams could be expected to improve heading into the 2026 campaign and who could regress.

The numbers suggest that Ineos Grenadiers have added the most firepower across the board, with Oscar Onley being the standout signing. The 23-year-old British rider finished 4th at the Tour de France in the Summer, becoming just the 8th British rider to finish in the top-10 overall at La Grande Boucle. 

Onley ended 2025 sitting 9th in the UCI rankings with a tally of 2,910, the second-highest British rider behind former Grenadier Tom Pidcock in 7th. Significantly, Onley sat head and shoulders behind the best-placed Ineos rider in the rankings, Filippo Ganna, who was 24th with 2,153 points, illustrating the importance of the transfer. 

It’s not just Onley who gives the British team the biggest increase in terms of UCI points, as Kévin Vauquelin, who also finished in the top 10 at the Tour de France, with a coming-of-age GC performance, also made the switch alongside his Norwegian teammate Embret Svestad-Bårdseng from the now-defunct Arkéa-B&B Hotels. Vauquelin sat 16th in the overall rankings at the end of 2025 with 2,459, another significant tally like Onley.

 Equally, the signing of French champion, Dorian Godon, as well as the Australian duo of Jack Haig and Sam Welsford, indicate that the British team have added the most overall strength based on UCI points. Further statistics suggest that Ineos may have 'won' the transfer window, but more on that later.

The increasingly ambitious Decathlon CMA CGM pushed Ineos close when it comes to incoming points, with 150 points separating the two. Olav Kooij headlines the transfer business for the French team, with the hope that the benefits of the move will be reaped when the Dutch sprinter makes his debut at the Tour de France in the Summer. 

The ever-reliable and well-rounded Tiesj Benoot is Decathlon's second most significant signing in terms of UCI points, with the Belgian Classics star sitting 54th in the rankings with 1,295 points. The versatile Danish fast finisher Tobias Lund Andresen and Vuelta youth classification winner Matthew Riccitello also contribute significantly not to far behind Benoot with tallies of 1,252 and 1020 respectively.

Other teams that sit towards the pointy end of the standings included Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe in 3rd, mainly due to the blockbuster arrival of Remco Evenepoel, who brings 4,118 points, more than 14 WorldTour teams acquired in total. 

One of the three teams that this doesn't apply to is Lidl-Trek, who sit in 4th with the key GC additions of Juan Ayuso and Derek Gee-West, which should have a big impact on a team, which the Canadian champion believes is operating close to cycling's 'gold standard.'

In contrast, Picnic PostNL, who lost their star rider in Oscar Onley, have been unable to move the needle in terms of bringing in established WorldTour riders with an abundance of UCI points. Instead, the Dutch team has had to operate in a way which focuses on the development of young talent and picking out talent from outside cycling's premier division. 

Tour of Holland stage winner Timo de Jong, and Gravel world championship runner-up Frits Biesterbos are among the names that the Dutch team will hope seem like value for money transfers at the end of their contracts.

Interestingly, UAE Team Emirates-XRG, the team that achieved a record-breaking 95 victories in 2025, are the team who have brought in the second least amount of points in the transfer market. There are a number of possible reasons why this could be the case. Naturally, it's difficult to make improvements to a team with such success, and what is clearly a group of riders pulling in the same positive direction of success. 

Additionally, there are many talented, but importantly, young riders at UAE, such as Isaac del Toro, Jan Christen, and António Morgado, to name a few. The likelihood is that these types of riders still have plenty of room for growth, a scary prospect in truth, meaning the need for strengthening isn’t as necessary compared to an ageing team.

Surprisingly, Visma | Lease a Bike lost the most UCI points, 6,816 in total, due to rider departures ahead of 2026. The departure of Olav Kooij stood out as the most significant, with Cian Uijtdebroeks and Tiesj Benoot also impactful in this aspect. However, things were only amplified further with the surprise retirement of the current Giro d’Italia champion, Simon Yates, leaving the Dutch team with the most points lost heading into the new season.

The most significant rider departure was Evenepoel from Soudal-QuickStep, and this contributed to the fact that the Belgian team sit second behind Visma when it comes to most UCI points lost with 5,066. The Olympic champion makes up 81% of QuickStep’s points lost, painting a clear picture of how big a void his departure has left.

Just like in terms of the points gained, Ineos are also best placed when it comes to points lost. Young Canadian Michael Leonard’s total of 162 was the team’s most significant hit in terms of points. Ineos’s overall points loss was 213, a big difference from Visma’s near 7,000 total. The British team may have lost one of their best riders ever in Geraint Thomas, but the 2018 Tour de France winner wasn’t a significant UCI points collector during the nineteenth and final year of his professional career. That doesn't mean that they will not fill the hit of losing Thomas’s experience and strength.

The same can be said for other experienced and loyal riders, Salvatore Puccio, Omar Fraile and Jonathan Castroviejo, who will be big misses to the team on and off the bike. This illustrates that the measure of UCI points has its flaws when being used to measure which teams had the most successful transfer window, despite its usefulness, as it doesn't take into account the experience and leadership of riders. 

In terms of overall swings, Ineos Grenadiers sit comfortably at the top with a massive +6,954 net gain of UCI points following their transfer business. The British team brought in the most UCI points from incomings, spearheaded by Onley, and conceded the least from their outgoings, leaving them as one of the teams firmly in the debate for having ‘won’ the transfer window. In total, the team brought in 

Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe followed in second with +4,605, Evenepoel’s arrival contributing significantly, with a tally which outweighs plenty of the WorldTour team’s entire business. Lidl-Trek occupied the third position of the podium, just as they did in the UCI team rankings in 2025, illustrating their continued ambition to try and close the gap to UAE and Visma. 

What’s notable is that the two current powerhouses of the peloton, UAE Team Emirates-XRG and Visma | Lease a Bike, sit 16th and 17th in the overall swing standings with swings of -2,750 and -3,479 points, respectively.

Only Picnic PostNL had a more negative swing of -3,928 than the teams that finished 1st and 2nd in the 2025 UCI team rankings, but as they have illustrated for many seasons, their squads have stood head and shoulders above the rest, and thus didn’t need much work in the winter transfer period compared to others.