Just as we anticipated: ASO has assigned the wild cards for the 2026 Tour de France to the French TotalEnergies (which will reach its 27th consecutive participation in the Grande Boucle, a record for a team not in the WorldTour) and the Spanish Caja Rural-RGA Seguros.

Alongside the 18 confirmed WorldTour teams, three teams have the right to participate: the Swiss Tudor Pro Cycling Team and Pinarello - Q36.5 and the French Cofidis.

Doors closed, therefore, for the Unibet Rose Rockets, a French-licensed team with Dutch roots, which was apparently not yet considered worthy of the world's most famous race. As founder Bas Tietema said in an Instagram post: "Today we received the news that there is no wild card for us for this year's Tour de France. 2026 will still be an incredible year. The Tour de France remains our big dream, continue to dream with us".

Unibet is called upon this year to make a qualitative leap in terms of results and for the Dutch team, a door might also open for participation in the Giro d'Italia, the only grand tour that has not yet officially made its choices.

Christian Prudhomme, Tour de France director, explained the choices to AFP: "We applied the same principle as in previous years, namely the second division ranking. Caja Rural is 25th, but with the closure of Arkéa - B&B Hotels and the merger between Lotto and Intermarché, they rose to 23rd place. Moreover, they finished fourth in the team classification of the last Vuelta a España, where their leader, Abel Balderstone, finished thirteenth in the general classification. He is Spanish, of course, but also Catalan, and this year we will start from Barcelona".

The director also commented on the exclusion of Unibet Rose Rockets: "They never waved their French license and indeed have a majority of Dutch riders. It's true that they've made excellent signings with Wout Poels, Dylan Groenewegen and Victor Lafay, all previous Tour de France stage winners: they can only grow and we will follow them closely in the coming years".