Who's at risk? UCI relegation battle ahead of the Vuelta a España

After the spectacular breakout of Oscar Onley at the 2025 Tour de France, where he finish 4th in the general classification, the team have slightly stagnated in their haul of UCI points over the past weeks of racing. 

Sitting with a 1,801 points advantage over Cofidis, who are in the drop, Team Picnic PostNL will be looking to all but secure their UCI WorldTour status in the Vuelta through the likes of young British talent, Max Poole, who accumulated a lot of high staged placed results, in the 2024 edition of the Vuelta, including 4 stage podiums.

Over the past couple of weeks of UCI racing, their best result has been a 6th placed finish in the general classification at the Arctic Race of Norway achieved by the American Kevin Vermaerke. The rest of the results have been from the team have been pretty poor, where if Onley didn't complete his Tour heroics, then the Picnic PostNL team would be in serious threat of relegation from the WorldTour.

Since our last look at the UCI points battle, Cofidis have actually cut the margin to Picnic PostNL from 2092 points down to the aforementioned, 1,801 points.

Once seemingly destined for relegation at the end of the three-year UCI cycle in 2025, XDS-Astana now look almost certain to secure their WorldTour status. Speaking to Domestique, team directeur sportif Alexandr Shefer admitted, “We knew it would be difficult, but it was twist or stick.” Their decision to change approach for the 2025 season has clearly paid off.

The Kazakh squad currently hold a comfortable margin of 2,248 points over Cofidis, who look doomed to the drop, and sit 16th in the UCI rankings. After a minor lull during the Tour de France, they quickly rediscovered their form, with Christian Scaroni and Clément Champoussin taking 3rd and 5th overall at the Arctic Race of Norway.

They came close to an even bigger success in the Vuelta a Burgos, where Lorenzo Fortunato narrowly missed out on overall victory. With the Vuelta a España on the horizon, expectations are high. Stage wins are certainly within reach, and fireworks should be expected.

XDS-Astana’s WorldTour survival now looks secure, and with fresh investment, the question becomes whether the Kazakh team can push on and move closer to the glory days of their past.

As has been the case for the majority of the 2025 cycling season, Intermarché-Wanty have failed to secure any significant results, and even greater, UCI points. This now leaves Intermarché-Wanty in a precarious, 18th position just a place above the dreaded drop, with an advantage of 1,142 points above Cofidis in 19th with Intermarché-Wanty's total points sitting at 25,244.

The rumours of a potential merger between Intermarché-Wanty and Lotto still exist and threaten to impact the relegation battle significantly, and it makes things a bit more uncertain and clear when it comes to which teams will be WorldTour next season as there will be a WorldTour license up for sale, due to the merger.

Looking ahead to how the Belgian team will approach the Vuelta, it remains to be seen what they can achieve in all honesty. Possibly we can expect to see the Belgian sprinter, Arne Marit, getting himself in the top end of bunch sprints, but other than that, their chances look relatively bleak as the season is coming to its climax.

As mentioned earlier, Cofidis look all but doomed for relegation from the UCI WorldTour, but in our opinion, that could be a good thing for the long standing French team as it allows them to rebuild their roster and developing their homegrown talent, and aim to come back to the WorldTour at the first time of asking.

With Cofidis sitting on a total of 24,102 UCI points, 1,142 behind Intermarché-Wanty, it remains to be seen where Cofidis would be able to close that over 1000 point gap in what 2 months remain of the professional cycling season, maybe they could achieve some more breakaway success at the Vuelta with three time stage winner, Jesús Herrada or Alex Aranburu.

If the reported merger between both Belgian outfits Intermarché-Wanty and Lotto comes to light, then this could be there own version of a get out of jail free card.

The fight for promotion for Uno-X Mobility is well and truly on, with both Intermarché-Wanty and Cofidis looking immensely unlikely to score a real amount of UCI points in the upcoming two months whilst Uno-X keep on performing. Recently, Jonas Abrahamsen took victory at the Circuit Franco-Belge, Johannes Kulset took a top 10 in the GC at the Vuelta a Burgos and Alexander Kristoff took his 98th win in a stage at the Tour of Norway.

The Norwegian team will not be competing at the Vuelta, this August/September as they were not one of the chosen wildcard teams and will instead compete at the Bretagne Classic, Lidl-Deutschland Tour, Lloyds Tour of Britain and the Maryland Classic in that time frame. With their main sights on the Canadian classics of the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec, where Tobias Halland Johannessen can achieve a top result.

Will Uno-X Mobility be able to climb into the top 18 in the last 2 months? They sait in 20th place and have 1,419 UCI points to make up on Intermarché-Wanty in the UCI rankings, it's possible. Especially considering the fact that Intermarché-Wanty really don't look like picking any points up at all.

The situation for Arkéa–B&B Hotels looks bleak. The French WorldTour team currently sit 21st in the UCI rankings with 21,964 points, leaving them 3,280 short of safety and facing the prospect of relegation to the ProTour. Beyond the sporting challenge, there are also serious doubts over whether the team will even exist next season, with ongoing struggles to secure sponsors capable of guaranteeing long-term stability.