UCI Rankings Riders Update | Jay Vine leads 2026 rankings after a highly successful January

The 2026 season has just kicked off, and with that comes the first UCI ranking update of the year. The first week of racing only featured races in two countries. On the one hand, we had the first World Tour event of the season, the Tour Down Under. On the other hand, three one-day races took place in Spain: Classica Camp de Morvedre, Gran Premio Castellón - Ruta de la Cerámica and Clàssica Comunitat Valenciana - Gran Premi València. Besides, there were as well a handful of national championships in late 2025 and early 2026 that are also included.

The biggest name of this week is Jay Vine, who tops the 2026 year ranking. The Australian star had an excellent month of January, earning 665 points, all of them in his home country. He won the Australian time trial National Championships in early January and went on to win the Tour Down Under as well.

He also brought home stage 2, besides of finishing in fourth place in the prologue. Not everything was positive for him, as a kangaroo that invaded the road during the last stage made him crash and sustain a wrist fracture.

Mauro Schmid comes in second place, thanks to a great perfomance at the Tour Down Under. The Swiss rider was second in the GC, which gives 400 UCI points, plus 45 he got throughout the stages.

Most other riders inside the top 10 participated in the Tour Down Under, which is the only World Tour event that has taken place so far. Harry Sweeny, Marco Brenner, Andreas Kron, Tobias Lund Andresen and Andrea Raccagni Noviero all went to Australia and put up solid performances, which allow them to be inside the top 10.

There are also less known riders that are not in World Tour teams, such as Merhawi Kudus and Awet Aman. Kudus is sitting in fourth place due to his victory at the African road race Continental Championships, which took place in November last year. He also finished sixth in the time trial.

Regarding Aman, he was second in the African contintental road race, which awarded him 200 points. The third place in that race, Oussama Abdellah Mimouni, is also inside the top 10 of the 2026 rankings.

In the year-long rankings, Tadej Pogacar obviously remains firmly in control, almost doubling the second place which is Jonas Vingegaard. The top 3 is not going to change until the next weeks, once the biggest stars begin their season. Still, we can see there were a couple of changes inside the top 10.

The aforementioned Jay Vine moved up from 20th to 10th, while Wout van Aert went up one position and is ninth even if his season is not going to start until March. The reason is that Oscar Onley did not travel to Australia, so he was not able to defend all the points he earned there last year, as he finished in fourth place.

Jhonatan Narváez was the rider losing the most places inside the top 100, as he abandoned Tour Down Under with a suspected concussion and could not defend the 500 points that are given to the GC winner.

Dylan Groenewegen, on the other hand, was the rider going up the most places. The Dutch rider had a successful start of the season, winning the only race he participated in 8Clàssica Comunitat Valenciana - Gran Premi València) and ranking up 33 spots.