The cyclo-cross season: 2025-26 decided, 2026-27 not yet.

Status on 22 October 2026

2026-27: no champion yet. The UCI's competition pages list the 2026-27 UCI Cyclo-cross World Cup with round 1 in Ostrava, Czechia, and later rounds that include Glasgow (round 3), Antwerp (4), Gavere (6), Namur (7), Besancon (8), Zonhoven (9) and Benidorm (10). The pages our research opened showed titles but no dates.

Search summaries of UCI pages gave some dates: Besancon on 29 December 2026, Zonhoven on 3 January 2027, Benidorm on 17 January 2027 and Hamme on 23 January 2027. These are not confirmed, because the pages themselves did not show them. We did not find the date of round 1 in Ostrava, so we cannot say whether the World Cup had started by 22 October 2026. Either way, no 2026-27 title has been decided. The venue of the 2027 UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships was not found in our research.

What a cyclo-cross race is

Cycling Canada describes cyclo-cross as racing that alternates riding and carrying the bike over mixed ground such as woods, muddy trails, meadows and short hills, on a bike like a road bike with wider, grippier tyres. Cycling BC's 2024-25 rules summary quotes these UCI articles:

• Article 5.1.017: the course is a closed circuit of 2.5 to 3.5 km, at least 90% of it rideable.
• Article 5.1.018: the course is at least 3 m wide throughout, clearly marked and protected on both sides.
• Article 1.3.018: cyclo-cross tyres may be no wider than 33 mm and may have no spikes or studs.
• Article 5.1.039: bike or wheel changes happen only in the pit lane.
• Article 5.1.062: no food or drink may be handed to riders, though they may use what they carry.
• Article 5.1.051: lapped riders leave the race at the end of the lap on which they were caught and are ranked in the order they were pulled.

Lap length is described differently by a BikeRadar beginner's guide, which says courses are typically 1 to 3 km; that likely reflects local races, while the UCI rule quoted by Cycling BC gives 2.5 to 3.5 km. A 2026 edition of UCI Part 5, Cyclo-cross, in force from 1 July 2026, is listed by a third-party site but was not read, so the articles above are as Cycling BC quoted them for 2024-25. More is on cyclo-cross and gravel.

2025-26: the World Championships in Hulst

The 2026 UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships were held in Hulst, the Netherlands: the team relay on Friday 30 January, the elite women on Saturday 31 January and the elite men on Sunday 1 February 2026. The UCI gave the weekdays; the calendar dates follow from them.

All from the UCI. Van der Poel rode alone from early in the second lap. The UCI says this was his eighth elite cyclo-cross world title, a men's record that passed Eric De Vlaeminck's seven and equalled Marianne Vos's eight women's elite titles, and it counts 12 rainbow jerseys for him across disciplines, 10 of them at elite level. Brand won her second elite title, after 2021, in a Dutch clean sweep, and the UCI says she broke Andre Dufraisse's record of eight consecutive elite medals. The Netherlands became the first nation to win the team relay more than once.

2025-26: the World Cup

The final round was at Hoogerheide, the Netherlands, on Sunday 25 January 2026, the day after Maasmechelen (UCI).

All from the UCI. It was Van der Poel's second World Cup overall, after 2017-18, and Brand's fourth elite overall and second in a row. Each won eight rounds. The UCI says Van der Poel's 51 elite World Cup wins are a record, one more than Sven Nys.

Other 2025-26 series, such as the Superprestige and the X2O Trofee, were not researched, so we give no results for them.

Where to watch

Our research did not find an organiser's broadcaster list for cyclo-cross, so we name none. The lists we could read for road races are on watching cycling.