Unibet Rose Rockets soften Tour disappointment with wildcards for Strade Bianche and Milan-San Remo

Alongside the eighteen WorldTeams, Pinarello-Q36.5, Tudor Pro Cycling and Cofidis secured guaranteed entry to all WorldTour events based on their 2025 ranking as the top ProTeams. Pinarello-Q36.5 and Tudor will take up their places at Strade Bianche, Tirreno-Adriatico and Milano-Sanremo, but Cofidis have opted out of both Strade Bianche and Tirreno-Adriatico. The French team had also already confirmed they would not ride the Giro d’Italia.

That left RCS with extra discretionary places to allocate, and Unibet Rose Rockets were among the beneficiaries. For Strade Bianche, the organisers handed out five invitations, selecting Bardiani CSF 7 Saber, MBH Bank CSB Telecom Fort, Solution Tech Nippo Rali, Team Polti VisitMalta and Unibet Rose Rockets.

Milan-San Remo, the first Monument of the season, will also feature the Rockets for the first time, with Bardiani CSF 7 Saber, Team Novo Nordisk and Team Polti VisitMalta taking the other wildcard places.

Those invitations add to an already busy spring for the French-registered ProTeam, which had previously secured wildcards for Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, Dwars door Vlaanderen, Tour of Flanders, Amstel Gold Race and La Flèche Wallonne. They missed out on a place at Liège-Bastogne-Liège, while Paris-Roubaix has yet to confirm which teams will ride the 2026 edition of the race.

Unibet Rose Rockets were omitted, however, from Tirreno-Adriatico. With limited room for invited teams, RCS Sport has opted for a different mix at the stage race, and the Rockets are not among the four wildcards. 

Bardiani CSF 7 Saber, Caja Rural Seguros RGA, Solution Tech Nippo Rali and Team Polti VisitMalta will take those places, leaving Unibet to look elsewhere for early season stage race kilometres.

The invitations arrive days after Unibet Rose Rockets were left out of the Tour de France. Tour organiser ASO awarded its discretionary places to TotalEnergies and Caja Rural Seguros RGA, leaving the Rockets without a start in July.

RCS, also the organiser of the Giro d’Italia, has not yet announced its Giro d'Italia wildcard teams. Domestique understands that RCS delayed its initial plan to name the Giro wildcards on Tuesday, with an announcement now expected early next week.

For Unibet Rose Rockets, that decision is now the central one. After missing out on the Tour, a Giro invitation would deliver their first Grand Tour start in the history of the young team.