How the stars aligned for Tadej Pogacar's return to the Vuelta a España

The hints were already there in the final week of the Tour de France. A year previously, Tadej Pogačar couldn’t help but betray a certain weariness when asked if the Vuelta a España was on his radar, but decorum – and, perhaps, internal diplomacy – meant he couldn’t shut down the idea in public. 

This time around, Pogačar’s words remained just as non-committal – “Right now, if the Vuelta started tomorrow, then probably I would say no” – but the mood music was entirely different. When Pogačar left Paris, it was clear that the door to the Vuelta had been left open rather than slammed shut.

That sense only heightened in the week since the Tour, with the Vuelta organisation teasing Pogačar’s participation in a social media post, and the rider himself dropping a hint at the ‘Pogi Challenge’ sportive in his native Slovenia over the weekend. “We will see on Monday,” he said pointedly when reporters asked him about his Vuelta plans.

In truth, the decision must have been a relatively straightforward one for Pogačar and UAE Team Emirates-XRG. There are certainly more arguments in favour of the idea than against. For the first time since he ‘became’ Pogačar by winning the 2020 Tour, the conditions are ideal for adding the Vuelta to his programme. Above all, he arrives in August seemingly fresher than at any point since his sequence of Tour success began. 

Pogačar’s lone previous Vuelta appearance came as a neo-pro in 2019. His debut season had already been promising, with wins at the Volta ao Algarve and Tour of California, but he exceeded all expectations, both within and outside UAE, with his body of work in Spain. 

Streaking to three mountaintop stage wins was one thing, but placing third overall after looking like the strongest man in the third week was something else altogether. “I came here with no obligations,” Pogačar said after his second stage win at Los Machucos, a victory that also confirmed he had no limits.

His team took note. The following year, UAE sent him to the pandemic-delayed Tour de France and, well, the rest is history. But victory there also condemned Pogačar to an annual rendezvous in July, and that appointment has essentially torpedoed any prospect of a Vuelta return until now.

Sports manager Matxin Joxean Fernandez has always been cagy about overloading developing talents with racing, and there is an unwritten rule at UAE that young riders on the roster are limited to one Grand Tour per season. That thinking was evident last year, for instance, when UAE resisted the temptation to send Isaac del Toro to the Vuelta after his near-miss at the Giro d’Italia.

It meant there was never any chance of Pogačar lining up at the Vuelta after his precocious Tour triumphs of 2020 and 2021, and the principle held firm when he surprisingly lost the race to Jonas Vingegaard in 2022. Shortly after that Tour, UAE ruled out the idea that Pogačar would seek to bounce back at the Vuelta.

In 2023, the Glasgow World Championships’ position between the Tour and the Vuelta meant that doubling up had never been on the cards in the first place, and UAE refused to revise that position even when Pogačar suffered another defeat at the hands of Vingegaard. Even before Pogačar’s jaded showing in the Worlds time trial, UAE understood that their rider was running on fumes and in need of a reboot.

That came in 2024, when a regenerated Pogačar – now 25 – opted to race two Grand Tours in the same season for the first time. It seems ludicrous now, but his decision to line up at the Giro that year initially seemed like an act of hedging in the face of Vingegaard’s July superiority. 

Instead, Pogačar swept all before him in Italy and France, but he quickly – and sagely – dismissed the idea that he would try to win all three Grand Tours in one season, opting instead to emulate Eddy Merckx and Stephen Roche by tacking on a rainbow jersey to his year.

2025, therefore, was the first time that riding the Vuelta was a genuine possibility for Pogačar in his Tour era. He preferred to focus on the Classics rather than ride the Giro last season, and it appeared that UAE management were keen to send Pogačar to Spain after he annexed the Tour.

The rider himself, however, had other ideas. Although Pogačar was a most dominant Tour winner, he was also a weary one, and he spent the final week of the race rather loudly admitting he wished the whole thing was over. A nagging knee injury, it seems, was the root of that malaise, but Pogačar also seemed to be very publicly flagging to his team that the Vuelta was not on his radar. Two days after the Tour, UAE dutifully announced that João Almeida and Juan Ayuso would lead in Spain, while Pogačar focused on the Worlds.

When UAE outlined Pogačar’s 2026 plans at their media day in Benidorm in December, the races missing from the schedule seemed almost as important as those listed. The programme seemed to be devised expressly to guard against the kind of jadedness that had afflicted Pogačar at the 2025 Tour.

The opening part of the season featured no stage races, not even the UAE Tour, with Pogačar limited to five Classics in March and April. His pre-Tour stage races, the Tour de Romandie and Tour de Suisse, were both events he had never done before, and the latter had been reduced from eight to five days in 2026.

It meant that Pogačar had just 37 race days by the end of the Tour, his lowest-ever total at that point of the season. In 2020, the final day of the Tour was his 40th race day of the year, while in 2021, he had 50 days raced by the end of the Tour. In 2022, he was on 45 days by Tour’s end and in 2023, despite missing racing due to a broken wrist, he was already on 43 days when he reached Paris. 

2024, skewed by the Giro-Tour double, saw Pogačar hit 52 days by the end of July, which convinced him to opt out of the Olympics. Last year, his counter showed 43 days when he battled with Wout van Aert on Montmartre.

But the numbers only tell a part of the story. Above all, Pogačar appears to have benefited by the distribution of those race days. His one-day focus in the Spring came with built-in downtime, away from prying cameras and microphones and attention. Racing Romandie and Suisse, meanwhile, brought him to events he hadn’t sampled before. More importantly than those 37 days, it all added up to greater mental freshness in July – and beyond.

That was evident in Pogačar’s body language across the three weeks of the Tour and in an apparently greater willingness to engage with the various ceremonial and media duties of the yellow jersey. On the Champs-Élysées, he wore a readier smile than the weary figure who stood on the podium a year ago.

UAE won’t ever admit it, of course, but Pogačar’s path to the Vuelta has probably also been smoothed by his likely opponents in Spain. Vingegaard, the only man to beat him in a three-week race, will be absent after riding the Giro and crashing out of the Tour. Remco Evenepoel, second this year, and Paul Seixas, the emerging talent, will also forgo the Vuelta.

On paper, the most dangerous opponent is four-time winner Primoz Roglic, who is lining out in his first Grand Tour of the year, but his compatriot is also a declining force, and his preparation has been affected by a training crash.

The rest of the contenders will be men who also have the efforts of the Tour in their legs or riders like Felix Gall and Oscar Onley, who will explicitly be racing to be best of the rest behind Pogačar rather than vying to beat him.

Assuming Pogačar stays healthy and on his bike, it is difficult to imagine anyone else riding into Granada on the maillot rojo on September 13. Then again, what’s new? Pogačar is the outstanding favourite for every race he lines up in, regardless of the circumstances.

Only one thought will have given Pogačar pause. He also harbours ambitions of a third successive world title in Montreal, and riding the Canadian WorldTour races has been the ideal buildup these past two years. 

Pogačar also knows that Evenepoel has made the Worlds the centrepiece of his late-season, and the Belgian has a proven ability to lock in on a specific goal. In ordinary circumstances, Pogačar would expect to beat Evenepoel and all others quite convincingly in Montreal, as he did in Zurich and Kigali, but the fatigue of the Vuelta would add another variable to the mix.

But the Worlds will be winnable for Pogačar in the years ahead. The stars might never align as smoothly for a tilt at the Vuelta – and a full set of Grand Tour wins – as they have this year. For a man seemingly set on eventually “completing” cycling, the decision was obvious.