The MTB World Cup adds an entry fee of €40,000 for teams and clarifies the classification system

The organization of the Mountain Bike World Cup announced a few weeks ago the biggest reform of the competition since its creation. It placed a clear emphasis on reducing the number of teams through a new classification regulation, but now a registration fee of €40,000 will be added, which will be definitive for the more modest teams.

The MTB World Cup adds a registration fee of €40,000 to its list of obligations in order to compete

Until now, any team or independent cyclist with the necessary UCI points could start a World Cup race, but things will change completely by 2025.

The event organization along with the UCI, have set out to drastically reduce the number of teams and already announced that only the top 15 teams, by UCI score, will have the right to compete in the entire World Cup, with 5 more teams added as guests for the whole year, making a total of 20 XCO teams, and another 20 for Gravity. In addition, for certain events, 8 invitations per venue will be given.

Which teams will be classified for 2025?

With that premise, we could start looking for which teams are currently better classified, but the truth is that it would be useless, as for 2025 many cyclist transfers still need to happen. The UCI will make the calculations from January 15, 2025 with the transfers and teams registered at that time and it is precisely the score of those cyclists that will determine how many points a team will have.

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Teams must be composed of a minimum of 3 cyclists and a maximum of 10, and the total score will be calculated by adding the scores of the top 4 cyclists in all age categories of the UCI World Cup of both genders, registered for the team for the 2025 season.

So until the departures and arrivals of new transfers are announced, we will not know which teams are better classified for 2025. And it could be the case like that of the Cannondale team, which has just lost its best cyclist, Alan Hatherly, and will lose positions in favor of the Giant team, which has signed him.

New registration fees

In addition to this scoring system, registration fees will be added, starting with €5,000 for all UCI teams that want to compete in 2025, and then adding €40,000 for the 15+5 World Cup teams.

An important sum of money that teams will have to pay to the organization to compete, which will definitely make a final selection among the teams with more modest budgets.

In addition to this distinction between UCI teams and World Cup teams, it seems that Federations will have their own section and their national champions and other cyclists may be among the 8 invitations that the organization will give for each event.

These changes in conditions will make the World Cup different starting in 2025. Cyclists with better results will have greater negotiation power, as their points earned could elevate or destabilize teams, and in turn talented cyclists who until now only had space in small teams could be lost.