The average men's WorldTour budget for the 2026 season has risen to €33 million, a rise of 4.5% on 2025, with the median salary for a self-employed rider up to €350,000, rising 5.6%, according to a report by La Gazzetta dello Sport.
The costs and salaries of the highest level of professional cycling have been rising year on year, with men's team budgets now totaling €663 million.
Ciro Scognamiglio published the data in La Gazzetta dello Sport, with Cyclingnews also able to verify the figures, which were presented during the UCI WorldTour seminar held in Geneva in mid-December.
Previous data included 18 teams but for 2026 the UCI calculations, based on men's WorldTour applications financial budgets, includes 20 teams. In 2026, Tudor Pro Cycling and Pinarello-Q36.5 have automatic invitations to the WorldTour races and so have similar budgets to the 18 WorldTour teams
According to the La Gazzetta dello Sport numbers, the average team budget has risen from €31.1 million in 2025 to €33.1 million for 2026. In 2023, it was just €26.2 million. La Gazzetta dello Sport indicated that the total budget for the Women's WorldTour was up to €80 million for just 14 teams. In 2023 the amount was just €42 million.
There are growing differences between the budgets of some so-called 'super teams' and those struggling to secure sponsorship, as a recent investigation by Cyclingnews revealed.
The likes of UAE Team Emirates-XRG, Visma-Lease a Bike, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, Lidl-Trek, Decathlon-CMA CGM and Ineos Grenadiers have budgets above or close to €50 million. Smaller teams or recently promoted teams like Lotto-Intermarché have to operate on perhaps half of that figure.
The super team budgets skew the average amount, with the UCI revealing the median budget is €28 million.
555 riders are under contract with the 20 men's WorldTour teams, with a total of 1,312 staff working for teams, that's an average of 65 per team, though this number may be inflated by the teams that also have a Women's WorldTour team and a development team.
Cyclingnews' recent team budget feature highlighted that 87% of WorldTour team revenue comes from sponsors, confirming the precarity of the sport's business model.
Fortunately, naming rights and visibility at the Tour de France means professional cycling is usually a good investment for major brands. EF Education-EasyPost CEO Jonathan Vaughters revealed that his team generated a media value of €98 million during 2025 after Ben Healy won a stage at the Tour de France and later wore the leader's yellow for two days.
Rising salaries – the difference between employed and self-employed
Rider salaries have increased above inflation and perhaps taken a larger and larger slice of team budgets in recent years. UAE Team Emirates-XRG spent €27.3m on salaries in 2024 and likely above €30 million in 2026.
Tadej Pogačar's €8 million salary makes him the highest-paid rider in the men's WorldTour, with race bonuses taking his annual earnings above €10 million. According to a well-informed source, a big-name sprinter able to win Grand Tour stages earns around €1.5 million per year, and a Tour de France super domestique earns close to €1 million.
The UCI numbers for 2026 published by La Gazzetta dello Sport reveal the significant difference in salaries of employed and self-employed riders. 43% (down from 47% in 2023) of men's WorldTour riders are employed by their teams, largely due to employment laws in France and Belgium.
Pogačar's huge salary and that of other big-name leaders skews the mean average self-employed male rider salary to €654,000 a year, while the median is €350,000. The median for an employed rider is €216,000, 46% less than a self-employed rider.
Employed riders and their teams face higher tax and social security contribution costs, while self-employed riders have to pay for their own pension and other costs but many benefit from residing in tax havens such as Monaco and Andorra.
Both rider categories have enjoyed increased salaries, often thanks to the negotiation skills of their agents. Employed riders have seen their average salary rise by 40% since 2023, from €144,00 to €216,000. Self-employed salaries have risen by 24% since 2023.
Read our special investigation on where and how teams spend their budgets: Where do cycling's super teams spend their millions?
