2025 season review | Team Picnic PostNL: Did Oscar Onley's Tour de France save the team in an extremely hard year?

The 2025 season marked a genuine turning point for Team Picnic PostNL, the rebranded successor to Team DSM Firmenich and, before that, the long-running development-driven structure founded in 2008 as Skil–Shimano. With Dutch newcomers Picnic and PostNL stepping in as title sponsors, the men’s WorldTour squad entered the year with a renewed identity but the same underlying philosophy: invest in youth, develop riders methodically, and trust the system even when the results arrive slowly. That philosophy defined every major storyline of their campaign.

It was a season shaped by transition, injury setbacks, breakthrough rides, and a Tour de France that reframed expectations for the team’s future. Across the board, the defining theme of 2025 was that a youthful lineup, anchored by veteran Romain Bardet in his final season, found ways to keep the team competitive at WorldTour level while laying the groundwork for the next era.

Team Picnic PostNL entered the year with a roster split between battle-hardened pros and a new wave of climbers and sprinters. Bardet’s final professional season gave the group a clear emotional centre, while experienced figures like Degenkolb helped steady a classics unit still finding its feet. At the same time, riders such as Oscar Onley and Max Poole, both barely in their early twenties, represented the long-term direction. Australian sprinters Patrick Eddy and Matthew Dinham, Dutch sprinters Nils Eekhoff and Bjorn Koerdt, and a Tour de France lineup comprised almost entirely of homegrown riders demonstrated how deeply the organisation’s development system was woven into its results.

The team ultimately recorded four victories in 2025, but the significance of each win went beyond the tally. Tobias Lund Andresen’s triumph at the Surf Coast Classic opened the year with a confident marker. Nils Eekhoff’s win at Nokere Koerse, delivered through a precise leadout, gave the spring classics a badly needed result. Casper van Uden’s Giro d’Italia stage win, arrived through a perfectly executed plan. And Oscar Onley’s stage victory at the Tour de Suisse confirmed his rising status among elite climbers.

In the WorldTour team rankings, TeamPicnic PostNL accumulated roughly the same haul as the previous season and finished 17th overall, just removed from relegation concerns. But, that does not tell the full picture.

The spring campaign, however, repeatedly tested the team’s depth. Bardet and Poole were ruled out of Paris–Nice and Tirreno–Adriatico before they even began, and Fabio Jakobsen’s season-ending iliac artery issue removed the squad’s most established sprinter.

Milano-Sanremo came and went without a meaningful result. At the Tour of Flanders, a late crash eliminated Degenkolb, Tim Naberman and Alex Edmondson, effectively ending the team’s classics ambition for April. Paris–Roubaix produced little more fortune.

The one exception was Nokere Koerse, where a disciplined and experienced group delivered Eekhoff to the line in perfect position for his win. Beyond that, the spring was thin: the Ardennes Classics yielded no serious contention, and most races required the team to improvise rather than execute structured plans. It was the most uneven stretch of their year, and it highlighted how much the squad relies on having at least one healthy climber or sprinter to anchor tactics.

Things shifted dramatically once the Grand Tours began. Bardet’s Giro d’Italia farewell offered the team purpose and clarity. Stage 4’s victory, where van Uden finished off a precise late leadout, was a breakthrough. Bardet’s own ride on Stage 17, where he attacked repeatedly on the Mortirolo and finished four seconds behind winner Isaac del Toro, was a reminder of the style that defined his career.

Bardet’s runner-up finish on that stage and other top-ten appearances helped stabilise the team’s performance. Poole, meanwhile, rode an intelligent and controlled first Grand Tour, finishing 11th overall. The squad’s director, Matt Winston, emphasised Poole’s progress, noting that he “moved up to 11th, continuing his steady rise”. By the end of the Giro, Bardet had animated key mountain days, Poole had announced himself as a future GC figure, and the team had its maiden Grand Tour stage victory. It was one of their most coherent and well-executed three-week campaigns, until a few weeks later in July…

The Tour de France eclipsed that. Why? Because Oscar Onley, without pre-race GC pressure, transformed into one of the revelations of the race. His consistency across the Pyrenees and Alps kept him within striking distance of the highest places on GC, and he was locked in a battle with Florian Lipowitz for the podium and white jersey after Remco Evenepoel abandoned the race.

Across the final week, he held his nerve. In the decisive mountain stages he remained glued to the favourites, and on the Col de la Loze he produced what The Guardian called “the ride of his young life”. By Paris he had finished fourth overall, the strongest GC result the team had ever achieved. Although the squad missed out on a Tour stage win, the depth of their performances was remarkable, and Onley announced himself as the next British GC talent. It was a demonstration of what a development-driven roster can accomplish when its talent matures simultaneously.

The Vuelta a España returned the team to its youth-focused approach. Without a GC leader, they raced aggressively in breakaways. Kevin Vermaerke and Bjorn Koerdt delivered top-ten stage finishes, but overall it was a quiet race for the team. There were no wins, but the race served the the team intended: to expose younger riders to Grand Tour intensity and encourage opportunistic racing. Still, it certainly did not live up to the hype of the Giro and the Tour.

The off-season transfers underlined the team’s trajectory. Riders arriving for 2026, Frits Biesterbos, Dillon Corkery, Timo de Jong, Alexy Faure-Prost, Mattia Gaffuri, James Knox, Oliver Peace and Henri-François Renard-Haquin, fit the team’s profile of long-term potential.

Departing riders included Tobias Lund Andresen, Enzo Leijnse, Kevin Vermaerke, and Romain Bardet, whose retirement marked the end of an era for once of France’s most beloved riders. The team will miss Bardet’s influence and Edmondson’s reliability, while the sprint train will require rebuilding. Yet the organization has opted for continuity: develop its own riders, promote from within, and piece together its next generation of leaders from the foundation laid in 2025.

Viewed as a single campaign, Picnic–PostNL’s year cannot be defined purely by its win column. The successes were selective but meaningful: a Grand Tour stage win, a landmark Tour de France GC performance, WorldTour survival, and the emergence of multiple young riders ready to shape the team’s next phase. Across the year, the squad found ways to adapt, recalibrate expectations, and extract strong performances from a roster that skewed young and was stretched thin at times.

Across all measures available to them, the team delivered what they needed to. Finishing 17th in the rankings, gathering four wins, avoiding relegation pressure, and watching Onley and Poole rise into genuine contenders was a meaningful step forward. Their 2025 campaign sits at around a 6.5 out of 10. No, the team cannot afford just 4 wins next year, but given their performances at the Tour and Giro, I cannot rank them any lower than a 6.5.

As a British fan, I couldn’t help feeling a jolt of excitement watching Oscar Onley and Max Poole turn 2025 into something far bigger than anyone expected. Onley’s Tour de France run was one of my highlights of the year, and it feels like British fans have found a new GC star. Poole’s steady rise at the Giro gave the season a second storyline to cling to. Following both of them across the year felt like watching the start of a new era, and it left me more optimistic about the future of British GC racing than I’ve been in years.

I can't share Fin's excitement regarding Picnic PostNL's season honestly, and wouldn't rate it above a 4. And that is largely owed to Oscar Onley, who was the only rider who kept this team at a similar level to that of the high-tier ProTeam squads. It's a team of youngsters and a few veterans that don't often perform, there is no middle point in this team virtually, which is very odd. The team's financial troubles seem to be true and it explains a lot... Not a criticism, but I simply don't believe that the team has a budget to be very active amongst the World Tour teams, that's the feeling I get. The transfers into 2026 are simply not good enough for a team of a top level, without any meaningful rider; and it's lost Andresen, Bardet and Vermaerke as men who did bring in results. As I write this, Oscar Onley is still on paper with the team, but he too will certainly leave to INEOS Grenadiers.

What does that leave Picnic PostNL with? As long as there is money they continue to remain in the World Tour until 2028 sot they're relatively safe, but there just isn't a World Tour level in the team anymore. Max Poole is a very promising climber, but he needs to take the step. And in the sprinter field, Pavel Bittner and Casper van Uden are quality riders, but they will also have big responsibilities on their shoulders. Everyone else is either chasing breakaways or minor wins in smaller races. Like 2025, I don't expect many UCI points, which will eventually matter if the team continues to exist over the coming years.

2025 was just lackluster. The obvious exception is Onley, third at the Tour de Suisse and fourth at the Tour de France. A brilliant development, and an excellent rider. A shame the team is losing him as well, another of their leaders who leave the team once they reach success. But the dire truth is that, no-one else has stood out this year. Casper van Uden took a nice stage at the Giro d'Italia, but these two riders took two of the four victories of the team. Four wins in an entire year, like Intermarché it is simply inexcusable. If the team doesn't have the level, have the riders compete in a more modest calendar, and gather success even with a different amount of spotlight.

Fabio Jakobsen was nowhere to be seen, Romain Bardet gathered a few minor results but no wins and retired in June, few of the youngsters really stood out and out of the veterans Bardet is the only one who was on screen. There isn't really much else to say. And the team is looking to be in more and more trouble as the years pass by.