WorldTour exit by choice? - Struggling Picnic PostNL considers dropping to ProTeam ranks for 2027

Team Picnic PostNL could voluntarily step down from the WorldTour for 2027 after a season in which the Dutch squad has struggled to produce results and has found itself fighting to remain inside the UCI's top 30.

The possibility comes less than a year after the UCI granted Picnic PostNL only a one-year WorldTour licence for 2026. While the other 17 men's WorldTeams received licences covering the full 2026-2028 cycle, Picnic PostNL's licence was limited to one season because of conditions attached to the team's financial situation. The decision left its WorldTour future for 2027 and 2028 open.

Sporting performance has since made that uncertainty considerably more significant. Picnic PostNL has endured one of the weakest seasons of any WorldTour team in recent years, with just two victories in 2026: Casper van Uden's stage win at the Tour of Turkey in April and Pavel Bittner's victory at Paris-Chauny in September. Bittner has since confirmed his move to Pinarello-Q36.5 for 2027, meaning the team's leading scorer is also leaving.

The points shortage has been particularly striking. By June, Picnic had accumulated only 1,434 UCI points at that stage, the lowest total recorded by a WorldTour team at that point in the season since the current points system was introduced. The team was already below a number of ProTeams, while its lack of consistent top-level results left it heavily dependent on a small number of riders.

The situation has improved somewhat in the second half of the season, but not enough to remove the concern. Pavel Bittner's results helped stabilize the team before his departure, while Frits Biesterbos emerged as an unexpected source of points. The 24-year-old followed his second place at Gooikse Pijl with a third place at the Münsterland Giro on October 3.

The underlying problems began before the racing even started. Picnic PostNL entered 2026 after losing Oscar Onley, who moved to Ineos Grenadiers following his breakthrough 2025 season, while Tobias Lund Andresen and Kevin Vermaerke were also among the important departures. The team had hoped Max Poole could take over some of the responsibility as a stage-racing leader, but the Briton's health problems kept him out for much of the season.

That left Picnic without a rider capable of regularly generating the large returns required to remain competitive in the WorldTour points battle. Bittner became the team's main scorer and finished second at Scheldeprijs, while Biesterbos provided several of the team's more encouraging results. But the distribution of points remained unusually thin for a WorldTour squad.

The Grand Tours offered little relief. Picnic finished the Tour de France without a stage victory, with its best individual result a fifth place for Bittner on stage 8 and the team unable to challenge for the major classifications. The squad was also unable to turn its participation in La Vuelta into a significant points haul.

A move to the second division could nevertheless make sporting sense for Picnic PostNL. Remaining in the WorldTour guarantees access to the biggest races, but it also comes with a more demanding calendar and puts a struggling roster under pressure to compete against teams with vastly greater budgets and better riders.

As a ProTeam, Picnic could be more selective with its race program and concentrate its resources on events where its young riders are more likely to compete for victories and development. That possibility is particularly relevant given the team's continued emphasis on developing young riders and its plans to promote Milan De Ceuster and Mees Vlot from its development program for 2027.

There is also a practical incentive created by the UCI's ProTeam system. The three best-ranked ProTeams from the previous season receive guaranteed access to all WorldTour events, while other ProTeams can still obtain invitations through the established qualification and wildcard mechanisms, meaning Picnic would still be able to participate in most of the top races.