Ten neo-pros to introduce and watch for 2026. It’s an unusual year with few riders turning pro but this year’s draft has some big names.
For all the rush to turn pro straight as early as possible, Jarno Widar (20, Lotto-Intermarché/Belgium) patiently spent an extra season in the Under-23 ranks. He had results in 2024 that were sufficient to move up but opted for an extra year of development and kept on winning to the point where if his Lotto colleagues could control the race and get him to the final climb of the day the result was often a formality for him. But the decision to wait another year was also because he’s so assured, others might have jumped for fear of missing the boat.
His 2024 season was strong but missing title was the Tour de l’Avenir only in 2025 he was pipped by Paul Seixas who’d dropped out of the World Tour for a week to grab it with Widar as runner-up. He’s won the U23 Giro d’Italia Next Gen, the Giro della Valle d’Aosta and the Ronde de l’Isard so has completed the set of amateur stages races for a budding grand tour contender. The palmarès is prolific but he now faces a challenge to establish himself as a pro. He’s 1m66 tall and 55kg which makes him smaller and lighter than any Tour de France winner. Framed in Belgian expectations he might be the next Lucien Van Impe more than the new Eddy Merckx. For a contemporary comparison think Lenny Martinez or Nairo Quintana. So he can be a punchy climber capable of big wins but at a disadvantage in time trials and crosswinds.
His future is interesting as Lotto are back in the World Tour but don’t have many obvious leaders. Other teams are interested in Arnaud De Lie and Lennert Van Eetvelt and many will be watching Widar too but the squad needs to retain them too. Widar is essential to their plans in the short term for results, and longer term for even bigger ones.
Jakob Söderqvist (22, Lidl-Trek/Sweden) almost won the Tour of Denmark last year but colleague and home hero Mads Pedersen managed to take it. Söderqvist had been promoted from Lidl-Trek’s development and won the time trial stage. The reigning U23 time trial world champion, he took the title in Kigali with a minute over the rest of the field and could have gone even faster only sat up for a victory salute. If he was “only” second in the U23 Paris-Roubaix, that’s because he finished alongside team mate Albert Withen Philipsen for a joint triumph (pictured). The only Swede in the World Tour he’s got the size and engine to make an impact this year in the classics but obviously getting a shot at a result is a big ask for a squad led by Pedersen with Milan, Nys, Withen Philipsen, Skujiņš and more. At 83kg he’s going to be a core their classics team for years to come and already one to watch in the smaller classics to see how he handles responsibilities and distance, plus we’ll see if he fancies any lead out work or is used earlier to chase.
Senna Remijn (19, Alpecin-PremierTech/Netherlands) was third in Paris-Roubaix behind Söderqvist, second in Liège-Bastogne-Liège behind Widar and this in just his first year out of the juniors. Now he moves to the pros aged 19. A cyclo-cross racer too, he’s an obvious classics contender but where will he specialise? Last September he finished third on a stage of the Tour of Luxembourg, after Ben Healy and stage winner Romain Grégoire had slipped the field. Remijn finished with overall winner Brandon McNulty, Matias Skjelmose, Richard Carapaz, Aurélien Paret-Peintre and Marc Hirschi (pictured). If he can keep company like this he’ll be invaluable to the team on hilly days as the squad has few riders suited to this terrain.
A decade ago a lot of recruiters, scouts and agents looked to Colombia for the next big thing only for two Slovenians to emerge. There’s less of a dash to hire Slovenians but they are establishing themselves as a cycling country and Jakob Omrzel (19, Bahrain/Slovenia) is a new flag bearer. He didn’t get into cycling to emulate Roglič or Pogačar, it was to copy his elder brother. He won the U23 Giro on the last day, overhauling Red Bull’s Luke Tuckwell. He was second in the Valle d’Aosta to Widar but there’s range because as a junior he won Paris-Roubaix. Bahrain have rushed to sign him so he may have a quiet year while he makes the jump up but look to see him helping leaders on hilly days.
Maxime Decomble (20, Groupama-FDJ/France) could be a ray of light for the French team which is seeing its budget fixed while rivals keep spending more. But it’s not all passive, the team extended contracts with Valentin Madouas and David Gaudu while letting Lenny Martinez go. Decomble has a small build and started out seeing himself as a climber but has discovered he’s a rouleur. He became the French U23 TT champ in 2024 he didn’t have any other big results but 2025 was very different, he lead the Tour de l’Avenir for days and held on in the Alps for fifth place overall but then had the range to take bronze in the U23 TT Worlds, finish second in the Euro champs road race to Widar and sign off with the win in the U23 Paris-Tours, and earlier hed raced with the World Tour squad including third place in the Gran Camiño time trial stage. From Marseille and a bit of a joker by accounts who boosts moral on the team bus and at the dinner table he’ll hope to bring some cheer to the squad with results too.
Alfred Bruce Noah Hobbs (21, EF Education-Easypost/Great Britain) to use his full name used to ride for GFDJ’s development team but switched to EF and the sprint results followed including three stages of the tough Tour de Bretagne last year. He’s been cycling since the age of eight which coincides with the take-off in Britain around the launch of Team Sky. At 67kg he’s interesting as a new model of sprinter, lighter and able to get over short climbs, think of Paul Magnier and Matthew Brennan too. EF has Marijn van den Berg covering this role too so look for Hobb’s in the flat finishes as he has the speed there for results this year already in sprints outside the World Tour.
Mattia Agostinacchio (18, EF Education-Easypost/Italy) won the junior world cyclo-cross champs in 2025 and joins the World Tour straight out of the junior ranks, the only rider doing this for 2026. In signing him EF have committed to a cyclo-cross project as part of the package, a sign of the team moving to meet him and build a project. He might even have suggested the idea because when he crossed over from mountain biking to join an Italian amateur road team in 2023 he also insisted on being able to continue with mountain biking in the summer and cyclo-cross in winter. A broad talent it feels too early to know where he’ll specialise but, like Albert Withen Philipsen his polydiscipline approach, comparisons with Mathieu van der Poel and Tom Pidcock seem obvious.
UAE have only signed three riders for 2026. Kevin Vermaercke will be a versatile helper possibly able to grab a win here or there, Picnic-PostNL decided not to sign Benoît Cosnefroy so the team picked him up in an autumn sale and Adria Pericas (19, UAE/Spain) is the only neo at UAE. He’s on a long deal until 2030. When Paul Seixas won the Tour du Pays de Vaud (the mini Tour de l’Avenir for juniors held in Switzerland) in 2024 it was Omrzel and Pericas who were his biggest challengers. Having signed Madrid’s Pablo Torres last year, Pericas from Barcelona is an obvious comparison. He’s set for stage racing and has won Spanish junior time trial title. Indeed a year ago he impressed so much at the UAE team training camp he was picked for join the World Tour team for the Al Ula Tour and got a top-20 to finish as their best rider.
Emmanuel Houcou (22, Pinarello-Q36.5/France) comes from Martinique, the French island in the Caribbean where he’s the third generation of cyclists and becomes the first from the island to join the pro ranks; Rony Martias from nearby Guadeloupe rode for Bouygues and Sojasun. A sprinter, he’s won European track championship medals and can handle some longer efforts and the plan at first is to see him as a lead-out rider for Matteo Moschetti and he can learn a thing or two from Sam Bennett.
There are many people called Pavel Novak (21, Movistar/Czechia) in central Europe but he’s out to make a name for himself. This is an exotic signing for Movistar, their most “eastern” signing Sylwester Szmyd over a decade ago. The Czech rider has been knocking on the door of the pro ranks for a while and getting results in the mountains with the Colpack Italian team (then a Conti team, now ProTeam under the name MBH Bank). A stagiaire with Q36.5 and then Jayco, now he joins Movistar and apparently after a big release fee was paid to spring him. His stage win in the U23 Giro was impressive, an 85km raid that saw him catch the early breakaway and then drop them all to win solo at Prato Nevoso but he was prompted into this because his overall ambitions had dropped away. The raid was followed the next day with a third place and all this got him on the final podium. The challenge is to start replicating this in the pro ranks.
And more…
That’s ten but Red Bull have Luke Tuckwell and Callum Thornley, with Aussie Tuckwell as the stage racer just losing out on the U23 Giro last year to Omrzel; while Scotland’s Thornley promises to be the biggest cycling export from Peebles since the Velocast and is versatile, he’s had top-10 on Alpine days and king of the mountains in the Tour of Britain but is big enough to be part of their classics squad too and so has plenty of options ahead.
Having cited Lotto-Intermarché’s Widar at the top they also sign Felix Ørn-Kristoff, familiar name given he’s the half-brother of the freshly retired Alexander Kristoff; Simone Gualdi is a punchy rider for hillier days; Australian sprinter Matthew Fox is notable because has got a contract with Lotto the old-school way by winning a lot of amateur races and we’ll see where he can get a chance on a team with De Lie, Menten as sprinters.
Groupama-FDJ have hired Matteo Milan, kid brother of Jonathan and a similar kind of sprinter too. Visma-LAB have Tim Rex, another brother and this time of Laurenz Rex at Lotto.
Comment
It’s not a big year for recruitment, there are only 34 first year neos joining the World Tour when the average is over 50 normally. It’s no trend, just dependent on places and hiring decisions last year and next year.
Increasingly the definition is blurred, the days of an amateur catching the eye of a pro team are almost over (see Matthew Fox to Lotto-Intermarché), and instead riders are nurtured on development teams and signed on long term deals and during this time they can join their squad’s World Tour team for some races. Now turning pro is a step along the way rather than a leap up.
The flipside is some 21 year-old are abandoning the sport because if they haven’t moved out of an U23 team to a development squad then their career path looks like a dead end already, even if there are still counter examples like 26 year old Mattia Gaffuri (Picnic-PostNL).
Looking ahead…
With few turning pro and plenty waiting, a draft version of 2027’s piece could be done already with Juan Felipe Rodriguez (EF/Colombia), Mateo Ramirez (UAE/Ecuador), Benjamin Noval (Ineos, Spain), Aubin Sparfel (Decathlon-CGM CMA/France), Hector Alvarez (Lidl-Trek, Spain), Ashlin Barry (Visma-LAB/USA), Lorenzo Finn (Red Bull/Italy) and Max Bock (Red Bull/Germany) names to watch among the amateur races but also when they move up for the day to race with World Tour colleagues.