Professional road cycling is a team sport, dominated by star names.
Individually, the men’s peloton currently boasts a ‘Big Six’ of riders who have fought between themselves to win the sport’s most prestigious stage races or one-day events during the 2020s — Tadej Pogačar, Jonas Vingegaard, Remco Evenepoel, Primož Roglič, Wout van Aert and Mathieu van der Poel.
But with every season, a growing ‘Big Six’ of WorldTour super-teams is breaking away from the rest of the pack, spending big and winning big, too.
European soccer has seen a rise of such monied mega-squads, with Paris Saint-Germain in France and England’s Manchester City harvesting the best players and enjoying periods of monopoly in their domestic leagues. We are now seeing a similar trend in cycling, with fewer teams capable of winning the biggest races.
In 2025, the team thought to be the richest in the sport, UAE Team Emirates-XRG, won nine of the WorldTour’s 15 stage races and 44 per cent of the WorldTour’s one-day events and stage-race GCs last year, a sign of its stranglehold on elite cycling.
Last season’s 21 top-tier one-day races were split between just six squads — Jayco AlUla, UAE Team Emirates-XRG, Alpecin-Deceuninck, Lidl-Trek, EF Education-EasyPost and Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe.
There are clear parallels between high budget and high performance. Money can make the wheels go round a little faster: having piles of it means squads can attract the best talent and coaches, pay higher wages to keep them, spend more on scouting to identify the sport’s next big thing, do more extensive wind-tunnel or track testing, conduct more research and hire more staff.
Tadej Pogačar wins last year’s Tour of Flanders – his UAE Team Emirates-XRG squad was victorious in a record 97 races during 2025 (Eric Lalmand/Belga Mag/AFP via Getty Images)
Cycling’s ‘Big Six’ teams all boast an estimated annual budget at least €10million higher than the WorldTour average of approximately €30m (£26m; $35m), itself double what it was 10 years ago.
The gap between the highest-spending teams and the rest has widened in recent years, too.
A 2025 Escape Collective article, based on an internal UCI report prepared by an auditor relating to top-level WorldTour team financial data, identified that between 2022 and 2024, the top six squads’ combined budgets grew by 21 per cent and that two years ago, the six accounted for 48 per cent of the total combined budget for the 18-team WorldTour.
In a practical sense, being on a super-team can change a racer’s confidence and tactics.
INEOS Grenadiers’ new rider Oscar Onley has gone from being Picnic PostNL’s only leader, on a team fighting for WorldTour survival last year, to being one of several stage-racing talents in a squad — and has already noticed the difference since signing in December.
Having teammates Thymen Arensman and Kévin Vauquelin alongside him in the top 10 at the recent Volta ao Algarve meant the latter could go up the road on the final stage, putting pressure on other teams. Onley saved energy and ultimately missed out on stage victory by a whisker.
“(In the past) You don’t want to take risks because if it goes wrong (for you), the team comes away with nothing… we (INEOS riders) can gamble a little bit more and that’s quite an exciting position to be in for the whole season,” Onley told The Athletic.
What does this mean for the sport?
Jonathan Vaughters, chief executive of mid-budget squad EF Education-EasyPost, has referred to a “growing tension” within cycling.
“The transfer and recruitment situation has become an arms race, but only among about five teams,” he told The Athletic in January. “Once you get outside of there, a lot of teams are suffering, the riders aren’t that well-paid, but they’re also not winning at the Tour de France.”
The scenario of a select few squads winning the majority of the sport’s races could make it harder for WorldTour teams to find sponsors and to survive.
The viewer might have to mind the gap too, in terms of entertainment.
“The dominance by just a couple of teams is not interesting for the sport,” Groupama-FDJ United general manager Marc Madiot told Cyclist magazine last year. “Bike racing will become like Formula 1, where you just see the same few people winning.”
So who are men’s cycling’s ‘Big Six’ teams?
UAE Team Emirates-XRG (United Arab Emirates)
Sponsors: The UAE’s government, a world-leading airline from the same country and an energy-investment company based there
Estimated budget: €50-55million
2025 world ranking/total wins: First/97
Star riders: Pogačar, Isaac del Toro, João Almeida, Jay Vine, Brandon McNulty, Adam Yates
What makes it a super-team? If Pogačar was a one-man squad, he would have finished 10th in the world rankings, a few points shy of Alpecin-Deceuninck. But as the four-time Tour de France winner has become even more dominant and versatile in recent seasons, the team formerly known as Lampre has invested shrewdly in talent and improved around him, helped by it having what is believed to be the biggest budget in the sport.
Pogačar is the Plan A, but he can count on the likes of Del Toro, Almeida, Yates and Vine to support him and challenge for the podium in their own right at other leading races. It isn’t just the sheer quantity of wins — their 2025 tally was a modern record — but the quality, too.
Mexico’s Isaac del Toro is the rising star at UAE Team Emirates-XRG (Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images)
Visma-Lease a Bike (Netherlands)
Sponsors: A software and accounting provider and a bike leasing organisation for companies
Estimated budget: €50m
2025 world ranking/total wins: Second/40
Star riders: Vingegaard, Van Aert, Matteo Jorgenson, Matthew Brennan, Sepp Kuss, Christophe Laporte
What makes it a super-team? Visma has reigning Vuelta a España champion Vingegaard leading the squad and targeting a Giro d’Italia-Tour de France double this year, versatile challenger Jorgenson and a Mister Do-it-all in Van Aert. Since Visma-Lease a Bike’s 2023 grand tour hat-trick heyday, underpinned by Vingegaard’s Tour upset of Pogačar, which showed all its tactical and planning meticulousness, it has been surpassed by the latter’s UAE Team Emirates. There could be further trouble ahead: team chiefs are searching for a new principal sponsor, with Visma set to step back in 2027. It has also started the year with the shock retirement of reigning Giro d’Italia champion Simon Yates and injury problems for Van Aert.
Lidl-Trek (Germany in 2026, formerly U.S. from 2014-25)
Sponsors: A European grocery store and an American bicycle manufacturer
Estimated budget: €40m
2025 world ranking/total wins: Third/46
Star riders: Mads Pedersen, Juan Ayuso, Giulio Ciccone, Jonathan Milan, Mattias Skjelmose, Derek Gee-West
What makes it a super-team? This is an ambitious squad coming off the most successful year in the team’s existence, able to challenge on all fronts. By signing Ayuso and Gee-West over the winter, it has transformed its grand-tour GC arsenal. Hulking sprinter Milan won two stages on his Tour debut in 2025 and former world champion Pedersen has shown he can be a regular “third man” to Pogačar and Van der Poel in the spring Classics.
Continental grocery giants Lidl took a majority stake in the squad in October last year, which has opened the budgetary purse strings for 2026. The aim is no less than to be the best cycling team in the world, although they might want a few more fresh faces as they are the oldest squad in the WorldTour, based on average age.
Lidl-Trek spent an undisclosed fee to sign Spanish Grand Tour contender Juan Ayuso from UAE Team Emirates-XRG over the winter (David Pintens/Belga Mag/AFP via Getty Images)
Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe (Germany)
Sponsors: An energy-drink brand, a manufacturer of built-in kitchen appliances and a seller of kitchen and bathroom fixtures
Estimated budget: €45m
2025 world ranking/total wins: Sixth/23
Star riders: Evenepoel, Roglič, Florian Lipowitz, Giulio Pellizzari, Jai Hindley
What makes it a super-team? Signing Evenepoel showed that these guys mean business. It will be intriguing to see what it can add to the world time-trial champion’s capabilities to help him to contend at the Tour.
On paper, it could have a stage-racing team to surpass even UAE Team Emirates-XRG, with five riders who have finished on a grand-tour podium in this decade, but it will be intriguing to see whether that theoretical strength in depth can make Pogačar sweat or be turned into ascendancy in practice. Much has been made of the team’s off-the-bike innovation and aerodynamics work. Unsurprisingly, this squad are one of the favourites for the Tour’s opening team time trial in Barcelona.
Remco Evenepoel has already won seven races since moving to his new team over the winter (Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images)
Decathlon CMA CGM (France)
Sponsors: A global sporting goods retailer and one of the world’s largest shipping companies
Estimated budget: €40m
2025 world ranking/total wins: Seventh/26
Star riders: Felix Gall, Olav Kooij, Tobias Lund Andresen, Paul Seixas, Matthew Riccitello
What makes it a super-team? Money and intent. The annual budget went up by €10million this winter, and the expressed aim is to challenge the very best. The French side could be the leading super-team of tomorrow, especially if the several leaders in their early twenties, not to mention teenage hyper-talent Seixas, make good on their immense potential.
Decathlon CMA CGM is reshaping the team around 19-year-old French rider Paul Seixas (Marco Bertotello/AFP via Getty Images)
INEOS Grenadiers (United Kingdom)
Sponsors: A petrochemical giant promoting its 4×4 off-road vehicle
Estimated budget: €50m
2025 world ranking/total wins: Eighth/28
Star riders: Onley, Vauquelin, Arensman, Filippo Ganna, Egan Bernal
What makes it a super-team? INEOS Grenadiers is not nearly as dominant as its previous incarnation as Team Sky, which bestrode stage-racing during the 2010s. In contrast, this team has only won one WorldTour stage race in the past three years. However, the investment in the squad remains significant, and according to reports this week in Cyclingnews and the Gazzetta dello Sport, it is about to go up considerably. Those stories say the team has agreed a new title sponsorship, potentially adding €20million a year to the kitty, which could be presented ahead of the Tour in July. Such a hike in spending power would likely put INEOS up there with UAE Team Emirates-XRG as one of the sport’s wealthiest teams.
This is a squad already in a state of rebirth (as evidenced by yesterday’s team time trial win at Paris-Nice), staking more on youth to return to the top, with stage racers Onley, Vauquelin and Arensman. Ganna, meanwhile, invariably has the power to contend for the spring Classics and time-trials.
