UCI Rankings 2023-2025 | Mark Cavendish and Arnaud Démare's teams remain at risk of relegation

We are currently in the middle of the 2023-2025 UCI Rankings cycle, which will decide the 18 teams that will be attributed a World Tour license from the 2026 season onwards. Whilst UAE Team Emirates largely dominates the rankings, at the bottom the Tour de France has not seen life get any easier for Astana Qazaqstan Team and Arkéa - B&B Hotels that continue to be in serious risk of relegation at the end of next year.

At the top is UAE, who was largely matched with Team Visma | Lease a Bike at the end of last season, but has completely dominated the 2024 season so far and is almost 15.000 points ahead (a gap almost completely created over the past 7 months). INEOS Grenadiers, Soudal - Quick-Step and Lidl-Trek following (not closely) as the next best teams. We have Lotto Dstny in 9th place and Israel - Premier Tech in 14th place. If nothing weird happens, both teams (who were relegated at the end of 2022) will get a World Tour license once again in 2026 as both have consistently been performing strongly and area ahead of the teams in the battle.

This means two teams will lose their license at the highest level of the sport - unless meaningful changes occur in the next months. The situation grows increasingly dramatic for Astana Qazaqstan Team who, despite reportedly having a big investment coming from a Chinese sponsor, has 11.711 points only. It is now in 21st place, having been overtaken by Uno-X Mobility, the third ProTeam which may even enter the fight to enter the World Tour.

Uno-X has 12.880 points and in 19th place is the other World Tour team at risk of losing their status: Arkéa - B&B Hotels, with 13.493 points. The French team is also in a dramatic position, but one that can be fixed, as they are around 1500 points behind Team DSM-Firmenich PostNL who holds the last World Tour spot. The Dutch team and Cofidis (17th place) are separated by less than 700 points, and Cofidis is around 1300 points behind Intermarché - Wanty who have scored significant points now at the Tour de France. As the gaps grow at the bottom, it becomes increasingly more difficult for these teams to close them down.