Is Jonas Vingegaard really leaving Visma? Dane addresses growing INEOS transfer speculation: “I read that I have practically signed already..."

Jonas Vingegaard is trying to win the 2026 Giro d’Italia for Team Visma | Lease a Bike, but even before the race has fully taken shape on the road, the Dane has already been forced to answer questions about a very different battle off it.

The two-time Tour de France winner has found himself pulled into one of the peloton’s biggest transfer stories after the launch of Netcompany INEOS, the new-look British project now backed by major Danish investment.

With INEOS looking to return to the very top of Grand Tour racing, and with Vingegaard still one of the few riders in the sport who has repeatedly beaten Tadej Pogacar in July, the speculation was never going to stay quiet for long.

Speaking at the Giro d’Italia team presentation in Burgas, Bulgaria, Vingegaard made clear that the rumours have moved far beyond reality. “I can almost read that I have practically signed already. But no, I have not spoken to them,” Vingegaard told the Danish media.

The latest round of speculation also centred on the presence of Vingegaard’s agent at a MyPreffy event in Tivoli, with suggestions that it may have been connected to Netcompany. Vingegaard rejected that idea directly. “No, it wasn’t. He was there to support us. So no, I have not spoken to Netcompany,” he said.

That is the fresh news line. Vingegaard has not spoken to INEOS. He has not spoken to Netcompany. For now, he remains Visma’s Giro d’Italia leader, under contract until the end of 2028, and still the centrepiece of the team’s Grand Tour ambitions.

But the reason the story has grown is not hard to see. Netcompany INEOS have arrived with serious financial muscle and a clear desire to restore the former Team Sky structure to Tour-winning level. Vingegaard, meanwhile, is exactly the kind of rider any team with those ambitions would dream of building around. He won the Tour in 2022 and 2023, has remained the clearest Grand Tour counterweight to Pogacar, and still represents one of the most valuable contracts in the sport.

This is not only an INEOS story. It also lands at a moment when Visma’s own future planning is under the microscope. The Dutch team have already been linked with Paul Seixas, the 19-year-old French sensation whose spring has turned him into one of the most wanted riders in the peloton. That link immediately raised wider questions about what Visma’s next era might look like, especially if the team are thinking beyond the current Vingegaard cycle while still trying to compete with UAE Team Emirates-XRG, Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe, Lidl-Trek and Decathlon CMA CGM Team in an increasingly expensive market.

That does not mean Vingegaard is being pushed out. It does not mean Seixas is being lined up as a direct replacement. And it certainly does not mean a deal with Netcompany INEOS is happening.

What it does mean is that Visma now sit at the centre of two linked conversations: how to keep winning with Vingegaard now, and how to prepare for the next generation before rivals get there first.

For Visma, the immediate priority is the Giro. Vingegaard is currently racing for the team in Italy, where his focus is on adding the maglia rosa to a Grand Tour record that already includes Tour de France and Vuelta a Espana victories.

For INEOS, the bigger project is still only beginning. Netcompany’s arrival has changed the scale of the team’s ambition, and with that comes inevitable speculation around the biggest names in the sport. Vingegaard’s response was firm enough. He has not spoken to them, and he has not spoken to Netcompany.

But in a peloton where Visma are being linked to Seixas, INEOS are rebuilding around Danish backing, and Pogacar remains the benchmark everyone is chasing, the question of where cycling’s biggest Grand Tour leaders fit next is not going away quickly.