The UCI changes the rules for 2027: winning the MTB World Championships will earn more points than a Tour de France stage win

Winning a MTB World Championship may be more profitable for a road team than achieving a stage victory in the Tour de France. Starting in 2027, the UCI will begin to account for certain results obtained in other disciplines within the road team ranking. A measure that could change the way teams are built and, above all, give large professional structures an economic and sporting reason to invest in modalities that until now barely influenced their ranking.

The new UCI regulation aims to reward multidisciplinary teams

Until now, a road team could have a world champion in cyclocross or MTB without gaining any benefit in their ranking from titles achieved off the asphalt. The new regulation aims to correct this situation and ensure that multidisciplinary successes have a reward for professional structures.

The measure, initially announced in 2025 and whose criteria was ratified by the UCI last September, will come into effect in 2027 and will affect four disciplines: mountain bike, cyclocross, gravel, and track.

However, not all results will be counted. In MTB, only the XCO World Championship and the overall classification of the World Cup in that specialty will score points. Individual World Cup races, Short Track (XCC), and Marathon (XCM) are excluded.

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In cyclocross, the same criteria will be followed, including the World Championship and the overall World Cup, but excluding competitions like the Superprestige or the X2O Trofee. In gravel, only the World Championship will count, while in track, certain events from the World Championship and the World Cup will be taken into account.

The criteria establishes 300 points for winning a World Championship and 200 for winning the overall of a World Cup. To put it into perspective, a stage victory in the Tour de France currently grants 210 UCI points, so becoming the XCO or cyclocross world champion will have a higher value for the team's ranking.

There is, however, a fundamental condition that prevents teams from accumulating points simply by hiring specialists from other modalities. According to the new regulation published by the UCI, multidisciplinary results will only be incorporated into the team ranking if the rider is among their top 20 cyclists in the road classification. In women's teams, the limit will be eight riders.

Moreover, these points will not be added to the individual road ranking of the cyclist or their country. Their effect will be exclusively collective.

More budget for other disciplines in exchange for points for the WorldTour

The scope of this modification goes far beyond recognizing the successes of versatile riders.

In current professional cycling, UCI points have direct consequences for teams. They depend on WorldTour licenses, which are awarded based on rankings over three seasons, and also a significant portion of invitations to compete in major races.

The top three ProTeams of each season have the right to receive an invitation for all WorldTour events of the following year, including the grand tours. Additionally, teams that aspire to receive discretionary invitations for these latter must meet the classification requirements set by the UCI.

With the new regulation, a good result in MTB or cyclocross could help a ProTeam secure an invitation to the Tour de France, while points accumulated during 2027 and 2028 could also influence the awarding of WorldTour licenses for 2029.

This is an incentive that could encourage the influx of budgets from large road teams towards disciplines like XCO, especially if the structures find it profitable to incorporate their specialists into professional road teams.

Pidcock and Van der Poel could earn up to 500 points off the road

Two of the best examples of what this new regulation could mean are Tom Pidcock and Mathieu van der Poel.

Pidcock became the XCO world champion in Val di Sole last August. If he were to repeat that result in 2027, he would add 300 additional points to Pinarello-Q36.5, a ProTeam for which improving its UCI ranking could be crucial.

The figure takes on another dimension when compared to his results on the road. In 2026, Pidcock earned 640 points for his second place in Milan-San Remo. His MTB world title would have been worth less than half that amount, but it would exceed the 210 points corresponding to a stage victory in the Tour.

Mathieu van der Poel presents an even more interesting case. In 2026, he won his eighth cyclocross World Championship and also claimed the overall World Cup title. Repeating both successes in 2027 would mean an additional 500 points for Alpecin-Premier Tech, without needing to substantially modify his usual winter schedule.

These are two cyclists who already combine several disciplines at the highest level, but from now on their teams will have an additional reason to continue supporting that activity.

The Shanghai track World Championship hints at the impact of the new points

The track could become another important source of points for professional structures, as evidenced by the recent World Championships held in Shanghai.

The Italian media SpazioCiclismo has conducted a simulation using the results from 2026 and the new criteria. According to their calculations, Tim Torn Teutenberg, a rider for Lidl-Trek this season and future member of Soudal, would have accumulated up to 630 points, while Iúri Leitão, from Caja Rural-Seguros RGA, would reach 425.

However, these are estimates and an important clarification must be made. The documentation presented by the UCI in Shanghai specifies that, for this system, the track considers the combination of the three Olympic endurance events: team pursuit, omnium, and madison. Therefore, not all results included in some simulations, such as Teutenberg's title in elimination, can be directly transferred to the road ranking.

The example of Leitão is particularly significant for Spanish cycling. The Portuguese rider won the omnium and was second in madison alongside Ivo Oliveira. His individual title would have a reference value of 300 points and, if an equal distribution of the silver in madison were applied, it would add another 125.

As CicloWeb explains in its analysis, there are still aspects of the calculation of collective events that require a definitive interpretation. In any case, the results from Shanghai allow us to see the potential that track specialists can have within road teams.

Decathlon is already preparing a women's structure that could benefit from the new regulation

The change may also help explain the growing interest of large teams in integrating different disciplines under the same structure.

One of the most interesting projects is the new women's road team from Decathlon CMA CGM, which could incorporate MTB specialists like Samara Maxwell and Greta Seiwald.

The team will debut in 2027 with UCI Women's ProTeam license and aims to develop riders from both road and MTB and cyclocross. Although the presence of Maxwell and Seiwald in their road roster is not yet confirmed, such an integration would allow for the combination of sporting objectives in different modalities and leverage results to improve their team ranking, as long as the riders meet the requirement of being among the top eight in the road team.

In short, the UCI introduces an incentive that did not exist until now for large structures to bet on multidisciplinary cycling. The road will remain the main source of points, but MTB, cyclocross, gravel, and track will no longer be activities foreign to their sporting interests.