It has been expected for weeks, but the final confirmation is still awaited: will the Unibet Rose Rockets – against all expectations from a year ago – race the 2026 Tour de France? The ASO has yet to hand out the wildcards, but: “It looks good,” said founder Bas Tietema on Monday during the theater show De Laatste Etappe in Utrecht.
At the Beatrixtheater, there was a theater show after the Cycling Gala, hosted by presenter Sander Kleikers, who reviewed the past season with Jip van den Bos, Stef Clement, José De Cauwer, and Tom Dumoulin. In the final part of the show, the five looked ahead to the 2026 Tour de France. Immediately, a possible wildcard for Unibet Rose Rockets was brought up. “I think there is a very good chance we will see them,” said Eurosport commentator Van den Bos.
Then Kleikers asked aloud to Tietema—who was an invited guest in the audience—whether his team would be in France next summer. “The official answer is that we still have to wait and see,” Tietema said. “But it looks good, so I have a lot of confidence. I hope we get to line up in Barcelona. And I hope we can say that in three years’ time, we went from the Ster van Zwolle to the Tour de France. That would be an incredible crowning achievement.”
Being competitive
With a French license, the disappearance of Arkéa-B&B Hotels, Cofidis securing a guaranteed wildcard, and the UCI rule change allowing Grand Tours to award five instead of four wildcards, all the cards are playing fully in Unibet Rose Rockets’ favor. A year ago, participating in the Tour was completely unrealistic. But due to developments over the past year, the chance that Unibet Rose Rockets will race the Tour has suddenly become very real.
Behind the scenes, hard work has been done over recent months to be ready both financially and sportingly to compete in a Grand Tour in 2026. This means assembling a roster from which they can field a team worthy of a Grand Tour. They have tried this with riders such as Dylan Groenewegen, Wout Poels, and Victor Lafay. “We don’t want to be there just to take part. We also want to win stages that suit us well,” Tietema told us earlier.
