Unibet Rose Rockets get Giro d'Italia wildcard after Tour de France snub

Unibet Rose Rockets will make their Grand Tour debut at the Giro d’Italia after securing a wildcard invitation to the race alongside Polti-VisitMalta and Bardiani CSF 7 Saber. 

RCS Sport made the announcement on Friday, when it was also confirmed that Tudor Pro Cycling and Pinarello-Q36.5 had taken up the places they had earned via last year’s UCI rankings.

The Giro organiser had three wildcard invitations at its disposal after Cofidis chose not to take up its automatic berth. As expected, Italian squads Polti-VisitMalta and Bardiani CSF 7 Saber secured two of the invitations, while RCS Sport awarded the final spot to Unibet Rose Rockets, who had lost out on a wildcard invitation to the Tour de France.

ASO sprang a mild surprise last month when it handed its final wildcard spot to Caja Rural-Seguros RGA rather than to Unibet Rose Rockets, with the Grand Départ in Barcelona and the Spanish squad’s higher UCI ranking appearing to form a large part of the Tour organisation’s rationale.

Caja Rural had previously been linked with a possible Giro wildcard, and they reportedly remained in contention when it emerged that the two Vuelta wildcards had been awarded to fellow Spanish squads Kern Pharma and Burgos Burpellet BH. 

RCS Sport ultimately decided against Fernando Gaviria et al, preferring to grant Unibet Rose Rockets a Grand Tour debut. 

The Dutch-managed, French-registered squad grew out of former rider Bas Tietema’s YouTube channel, stepping up to ProTeam level in 2024. They reinforced significantly ahead of the 2026 season with the aim of making the Tour de France, signing Dylan Groenewegen, Victor Lafay and Wout Poels, while Marcel Kittel came on board as sprint coach.

Tietema, made the ambition clear: “We are not going to the Giro d’Italia just to participate: we are going there to compete. Our clear objective is to win a stage, and naturally the first stage stands out. It’s a unique sprint opportunity where you potentially can take the pink jersey. That prospect motivates the entire team enormously. From day one, we want to be visible, ride offensive and we will be fully committed to making an impact:.

It is expected that Groenewegen will be the centrepiece of their Giro squad targeting that first stage.

The 2026 Giro gets under way on May 8 with three stages in Bulgaria and concludes in Rome on May 31.

Jonas Vingegaard (Visma | Lease a Bike) will make his Giro debut as he looks to complete a full set of Grand Tour victories, while João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), Jai Hindley (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) and Derek Gee-West (Lidl-Trek) have also confirmed their participation.