Visma continue contract push as Lemmen extends until 2029 following Affini renewal

Team Visma | Lease a Bike have continued to secure the core around their Grand Tour leaders, extending Bart Lemmen's contract until the end of the 2029 season.

The agreement keeps Lemmen with the Dutch team for another three years beyond his previous deal, which ran through 2027. It also comes just 24 hours after Visma announced that Edoardo Affini had signed until 2029, giving the team long term certainty over two trusted support riders.

In Lemmen's case, however, his value is increasingly extending beyond domestique duties.

The 30-year-old has enjoyed another significant step forward in 2026. After helping Jonas Vingegaard win the Giro d'Italia in May, Lemmen produced one of his strongest stage racing performances to date at the Tour de Suisse. He finished third on two stages and tenth overall, showing again that he can remain competitive deep into difficult mountain races.

That progression was rewarded at the Tour de Pologne in August.

Lemmen attacked on the final climb to Karpacz to take stage four, holding off Christian Scaroni for what was his first professional victory at WorldTour level. The win also put him into the race leader's jersey. He eventually finished fifth overall after losing time later in the race.

It added another line to an unusual career trajectory that has taken Lemmen from the Dutch military to the highest level of professional cycling in only a few years.

After racing for Continental team VolkerWessels, Lemmen became a full time professional with Human Powered Health in 2023 at the age of 27. Visma brought him into the WorldTour one year later and his adaptation was almost immediate.

In 2024, his first season with the team, Lemmen finished fifth overall at the Tour Down Under, tenth at the UAE Tour and second at the Tour of Norway. He was then drafted into Visma's Tour de France squad and finished sixth on stage nine while working primarily in support of Vingegaard.

His second season brought another podium in a Tour de Suisse stage and second overall at the Tour de Slovaquie, before his 2026 campaign provided the clearest indication yet that he can combine support duties with opportunities of his own.

"I'm really happy to have extended my contract with the team and that I'll continue to be part of Team Visma | Lease a Bike," Lemmen said in a press release by the team."

"After three years, the team feels like a second home to me. I'm very grateful for the trust the team has shown in me, and I'm looking forward to continuing this journey together until 2029."

Visma's Head of Racing Marc Reef believes there is still more to come for Lemmen.

"Bart's story is a special one," Reef said. "He has shown that with dedication, an open mindset and the right environment, it is possible to make enormous steps in a relatively short period of time."

"We believe he has not yet reached his ceiling. Bart is a rider who fully embraces the way we work, is an incredibly valuable teammate and continues to develop every season."