There are many upsides to moving the women’s Giro to May-June, but the Vuelta Femenina might well suffer as a result.
Defending Vuelta champ Demi Vollering is a conspicious absence from this year’s race.
The 2026 Vuelta España Femenina kicks off this Sunday, putting the Spring Classics firmly in the rear-view mirror and heralding the start of so-called tours season. The women’s Vuelta has only grown in stature and significance in recent years, and it regularly attracts the best stage racers in the world.
Demi Vollering (FDJ United-Suez), queen of the recent Classics, won the last two editions. One of the all-time greats, Annemiek van Vleuten, claimed the three editions before that.
We can see the Vuelta’s growing importance via ProCyclingStats’ startlist quality metric. Last year, the Vuelta had the fourth-best startlist of any race on the women’s calendar. Only the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, Strade Bianche, and the Amstel Gold Race had a stronger startlist than the 2025 Vuelta. That put the Spanish ‘Grand Tour’ ahead of the Tour of Flanders (fifth), Road Worlds in Rwanda (ninth), and the Giro d’Italia (11th), to name just a few top races.
In 2026, though, things look a little different for the Vuelta Femenina. And that’s the result of a single, but very significant shuffle to the Women’s WorldTour calendar.
Back in June 2025, Giro d’Italia organisers RCS Sport announced that this year’s women’s Giro would be moving from its traditional July timeslot to late May/early June, to follow the men’s Giro. It was an exciting and long-awaited move. For one, the new timeslot means the women’s Giro won’t be competing for attention with the men’s Tour de France as it has done for so long. Moving the Giro forward in the calendar also makes it more feasible for riders to attempt a GC campaign at both the Giro and Tour – something that the best riders have largely avoided since the Tour de France Femmes began in 2022.
More broadly, the Giro’s move is another sign of RCS’s continued efforts to help bolster women’s racing.
It’s unlikely to be a coincidence that RCS moved the women’s Giro to immediately after the men’s Giro, after the success its rival ASO has had running the Tour de France Femmes right after the men’s Tour. But RCS is taking other meaningful steps too. The resurrection of the women’s Milan-San Remo is a significant data point, so too are the credible rumours that a women’s Il Lombardia will soon be added to the calendar (it’s the only men’s Monument still lacking a corresponding women’s race).
But all those benefits, all of that progress – it might well come at the expense of the Vuelta Femenina.
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