Which teams could be relegated in 2025?

As we have mentioned on some occasions, in this 2025 a new three-year period of validity of the World Tour team licenses, the highest category in cycling, concludes. This means that the fight for points between teams in danger of relegation becomes increasingly fierce to scrape every position in all the races that take place. This is the current situation after the start of the season.

Teams at the bottom of the World Tour searching for every point from day one

After the first month of competition in the season, we can already begin to guess which teams have been doing their homework well during these last two years and which ones will have to sweat to make a comeback if they want to maintain their World Tour license at the end of the year, when the current three-year period of license validity expires.

We remind you that, with the current system, teams accumulate points in the various competitions they participate in over a period of three years. At the end of this period, only the top 18 teams in terms of points accumulated will have the right to obtain a World Tour license, the highest category in cycling, as long as they meet the economic and organizational requirements established by the UCI.

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The most notable aspect of this first month of competition is how the teams at the bottom of the standings have been fighting hard from the beginning in a year that will be a constant stress for them due to the need to scrape every position in every race.

Especially remarkable is the performance of XDS Astana after the financial injection from their new Chinese sponsor. A team that, despite not achieving any victories yet, has been consistently placing in the top 10 in practically every race, with some races even having more than one rider in those positions. Also noteworthy are the 150 points that Aaron Gate obtained in the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race, a one-day World Tour category race. All this means that XDS Astana is the third best team so far this season.

However, the points debt accumulated in previous years is still significant, and XDS Astana remains in 21st place in the three-year classification, more than 4,000 points behind Cofidis, the team currently at the salvation limit of the category. Cofidis, in this first month of competition, has also done their homework and has accumulated a juicy 633 points.

A similar role to Cofidis has been played by Picnic-PostNL, which occupies 17th place with less than 1,000 points behind the French team. In the fight to have a calm season, they have managed to accumulate 658 points at the start of the campaign.

Arkea-B&B Hotels, currently in 19th place, the first team that would lose its category with a deficit of just under 2,000 points compared to Cofidis, has had a much more discreet role. Despite the 449 points obtained in 2025 placing them in the middle of the annual classification, it does not seem to be a sufficient pace to reach the top 18.

The opposite is true for the best ProTeam in the classification, Uno-X Mobility, which still remains ahead of XDS Astana in the three-year classification, occupying the twentieth position with a deficit of just under 3,000 points compared to Cofidis, with whom they have had a tough competition this month resulting in a deficit of just over 100 points for the Norwegians.

We cannot finish this article without mentioning Movistar Team. The only Spanish World Tour team, which in the previous three-year period struggled until the last minute to secure its place in the highest category, has not only been doing their homework in the last two years but has also started the season brilliantly. In fact, they are the second-best team so far this year, only surpassed, as expected, by UAE Team Emirates-XRG.

Movistar Team has shown to be extremely competitive in all the races they have participated in, with highlights including Javi Romo's stage victory and second place in the general classification at the Tour Down Under, as well as the spectacular triumph achieved by Iván Romeo a few days ago in the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana. Their good performance places Movistar Team comfortably in thirteenth place in the three-year classification.