The first stage of the 26th Tour Down Under, which took place on January 20th, officially kicked off the calendar of professional road racing competitions for the 2026 season, which in the last weekend, with races held in France, Spain, Portugal, Rwanda and the United Arab Emirates, saw its first intense month of racing come to a close.

Although this is only the prologue of a very long season that will experience its most significant moments later on, in this inaugural stretch of the year there have been those who, within the peloton, have managed to stand out and achieve more relevant results than others, earning themselves the spotlight and setting their teams on the right path.

Let us see, therefore, both at the individual and team level, who has started strongest from the blocks in what we remind you is the first season of the new three-year cycle 2026-2028.

Points and victories: the most prolific riders

Focusing on individuals, one month before the World Tour's start, in the very top positions of the UCI individual ranking (which takes into account points accumulated over the last 52 weeks), there are no particularly significant upheavals.

Leading the standings indeed, even without yet having pinned the number on his back, is still Tadej Pogacar, who, with a sideral advantage, precedes Isaac Del Toro (who moved from third to second position thanks to his triumph at the UAE Tour), his great rival Jonas Vingegaard, and in order, Pedersen, Almeida, Pidcock and van der Poel. Behind them, boosted by his victory in Algarve, Juan Ayuso is the one who made the biggest jump, climbing from fifteenth to ninth position, a leap that has allowed him to get ahead of people like Wout van Aert (10th) and Jay Vine (11th), who, after a month of racing, both maintain approximately three hundred points of margin over the first Italian in the standings, that Christian Scaroni who, despite losing four positions, has confirmed his place in the world top 15.

Strong from the three victories achieved between the Tour of Oman and the Classica Camp de Morvedre, the rider from Brescia is currently third both in the standings of multiple winners in 2026 and in that of the most productive riders in terms of points: in the first, where he shares the position with Del Toro, the first classified at Tour Down Under Vine and Luke Mudgway (who won at the Pune Grand Tour), the XDS-Astana rider chases only Remco Evenepoel (first with six personal victories) and Jonathan Milan (second with five); in the second instead, with 740 points, the class of '97 former Gazprom rider places himself behind Mauro Schmid (1st with 1070 points thanks to his performances at the Muscat Classic and Tour of Oman) and Del Toro (2nd with 826), but ahead of both Antonio Tiberi (4th with 734) and Evenepoel (5th with 725).

Victories and annual standings: the most performing World Tour teams

Given that the same names have repeatedly emerged from this brief analysis of individuals, it is not surprising that, shifting the focus of the discussion to teams, it is precisely the formations with the riders mentioned above within them that have put together the best results in this first month of 2026.

UAE Team Emirates-XRG with Del Toro and Vine, XDS-Astana with Scaroni, Team Jayco-AlUla with Schmid and Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe with Evenepoel occupy in this order, thanks to the performances of their main firepower, the first four places in the annual team ranking (which for this first year coincides with that of the three-year cycle) and, in addition, all fall within the first nine positions in the standings of teams with multiple victories of the year.

In this standings, behind the Emirati team (first with 13 triumphs) and that of Ralph Denk (second with nine), it is worth noting the significant presence in the positions that matter of INEOS Grenadiers, Lidl-Trek (both with seven victories) and Decathlon CMA CGM Team (with six victories ahead of XDS-Astana, the newly promoted NSN and Jayco-AlUla), a clear sign that these three representatives have also had no problems in quickly finding the right feeling with victory.

In this regard, the same cannot be said of EF Education-EasyPost and Team Picnic PostNL which, more than a month after the first World Tour race of the year, have not only failed to break through but, between the two, have accumulated just four combined third-place finishes: from them it is inevitable, sooner or later, to expect something more, and time, in this sense, is certainly on their side.

ProTeams situation

Among the second-tier professional teams that have best managed themselves in these first weeks, mention should be made of Cofidis (the only one, along with the surprising Flanders-Baloise, to have two victories so far) and Tudor of Fabian Cancellara: both, also taking advantage of the automatic invitation right to World Tour races for this season, are currently the second and first ProTeam formation in the 2026 team ranking.

Behind them, enclosed within about sixty points and always among the first thirty positions in the team standings, we then see Pinarello-Q36.5 (which broke through in the last weekend with Tom Pidcock), Unibet Rose Rockets and Burgos Burpellet BH, which, unlike the other two, in this calendar year 2026 is still searching for its first winning performance.

In the same situation as the white and violet team are Caja Rural - Seguros RGA, Equipo Kern Pharma and Polti-VisitMalta, which, while waiting to see one of their riders raise their arms to the sky, have nonetheless all accumulated a number of points such as to already result among the first 30 in the team standings, a conditio sine qua non this to be included, at the end of the year, among the formations eligible for wildcards in the Grand Tours 2027.

Outside the top 30 but already on the board in this first month are both Solution Tech-NIPPO Rali and a MBH Bank CSB Telecom Fort currently further back, in the comparison at a distance between teams that arrived this year at the second level, compared to Modern Adventure Pro Cycling of George Hincapie, which already boasts both a momentary place among the best thirty and a victory in the trophy case. Still searching, finally, for both of these results is Bardiani CSF 7 Saber, which, with the start of the Italian calendar, will certainly have the opportunity to gain momentum and replicate (if not even improve) what was achieved in 2025.