39 days until 2026 and many top riders remain without a public contract - Girmay, Gee, Froome, Kwiatkowski, etc

The 2026 season is coming closer and closer and lots of riders remain without a contract for the 2026 season. Some do, but are not publicly revealed by their teams. But amongst those who aren't known by the public to have a sitting contract for the upcoming year are the likes of Biniam Girmay, Richard Carapaz, Chris Froome, Derek Gee and Michal Kwiatkowski.

In the World Tour there are different situations developing. The Intermarché - Wanty riders are included in the 79-rider list, and it is still not certain at this point in time which riders will make it into the Intermarché-Lotto merger, which will inevitably lead to a difficult situation for those who don't find a contract. Riders like Taco van der Hoorn, Gerben Thijssen and Georg Zimmermann are included in that; so is Biniam Girmay but the Eritrean has reportedly signed with the new NSN Cycling Team and an announcement is expected for soon.

Then there is EF Education-EasyPost, reportedly having 29 riders under contract for 2026, but publicly they only have 22. The American team does not share the contract duration of all its riders for an unknown reason, and the list suggests that riders such as Richard Carapaz, Archie Ryan and Lukas Nerurkar remain without a contract - whilst this is not actually the case and the team has already gathered in Spain.

We've got other riders present here such as Michal Kwiatkowski who is rumoured to extend his contract with INEOS Grenadiers; Fernando Gaviria who should join Caja Rural - Seguros RGA; Torstein Traeen who should join Uno-X Mobility and Florian Sénéchal who is heading to Alpecin-Deceuninck. However simultaneously, there are high-quality riders such as Ben Swift, Esteban Chaves, Ruben Guerreiro, Jack Haig, Sam Welsford and Clément Venturini who are legitimately still looking to find a team towards the 2026 season, and face the possibility of retiring too.

At ProTeam level there is the very specific case of Derek Gee, who was put in a legal battle against Israel - Premier Tech due to the termination of his contract with the team. The team is no more, and its license has been bought out, which leaves Gee in further position of confusion. He looked set to sign with INEOS Grenadiers but the former owners of the Israeli team's legal dispute is still in the way of the Canadian. IPT also has Chris Froome on the verge of retirement after many years without results and a recent crash which left him with extensive injuries.