Giro d’Italia 2026: Extra wildcard likely as Cofidis leaves Giro off its programme

The Giro is scheduled from 8 to 31 May, with a start in Bulgaria and a finish in Rome. A check of the Cofidis website shows no Giro participation listed at present. Instead, the May schedule features Eschborn Frankfurt, the Tour of Hungary, the Antwerp Port Epic and a run of French races, including GP du Morbihan, Tour du Finistere, Boucles de l’Aulne, Classique Dunkerque, 4 Jours de Dunkerque and Boucles de la Mayenne.

The published programme, which currently extends to the end of July, also omits several early season WorldTour fixtures. There is no Tour Down Under, Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race, UAE Tour, Strade Bianche, Tirreno Adriatico, Volta a Catalunya, Tour de Romandie or Tour de Suisse on the slate.

Under UCI rules, the top two ProTeams from the previous season receive automatic entry to all WorldTour events. For 2026, those places fall to Tudor Pro Cycling Team and Pinarello Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team. Cofidis also has an automatic wildcard for the full WorldTour calendar by virtue of its ranking, but it is free to choose its race schedule.

If Cofidis formally declines the Giro, the organisers could invite a third ProTeam in addition to the two places already available. The most likely beneficiaries are Italian teams Bardiani CSF 7 Saber and Polti VisitMalta. A final berth could be contested by three Spanish squads, Burgos Burpellet BH, Caja Rural-Seguros RGA and Equipo Kern Pharma, and by two French teams, TotalEnergies and Unibet Rose Rockets.

Grand Tour wildcards can only be allocated to teams ranked inside the top 30 of the previous season. In the 2025 table, Solution Tech-NIPPO-Rali, Euskaltel Euskadi, Flanders Baloise and Novo Nordisk fell outside that threshold and would not be eligible.