Traditional under-23 event employs 'Pay to start' strategy... and UCI immediately puts a stop to it!

Alongside Tour de l'Avenir, the Giro Next Gen are the biggest under-23 stage races on the UCI calendar, second only to World and European Championships on the one-day race side. With legendary champions on its roll of honour such as Marco Pantani, Francesco Moser, Gilberto Simoni or Danilo Di Luca, there's no wonder the Italian race holds tremendous prestige in the cycling world, and that every youth-oriented formation wishes to be part of the race's legacy.

With up to (and sometimes over) 50 applications for a maximum of 30-35 team slots, the organizers are often faced with hard choices when it comes to selection of participating teams, but those are pleasant worries. Or so it seemed, but the organizing party - recently named RCS Sport - has opted for a radical step: to ask participating teams to pay €10,000 to be part of the 2026 Giro Next Gen, Ciclismoweb reports.

The response was immediate; eight Italian continental teams previously invited to the event have submitted a formal letter at FCI (Italian Cycling Federation), stating that under these conditions they have no intention of participating in the 2026 race.

Shocked FCI forwarded the message to UCI, which has been already alerted of the situation through complaints filed by participating Development teams of WorldTour formations, appealing to the article in the UCI regulations which states that no participation fee can be requested by the organizers from the participating teams.

The UCI's response was, for once, clear and concise: RCS Sport cannot ask for participation contributions from teams invited to the Giro d'Italia Under 23.

But where did this idea even come from?

The origins stem from their counterpart Tour de l'Avenir. The "mini-Tour de France" is transitioning from Nations Cup (a race category which no longer exists in 2026) to a regular under-23 race with trade teams at the start. And, according to rumours, the transalpine race has asked €10,600 from teams to be allowed to start the 2026 edition.