A delve into the UCI Regulations for World Cup downhill in 2025 and beyond produced some rather interesting rules around wildcard selection as well as World Series and Elite Teams.
The UCI Regulations for Mountain Biking is mostly a document used to set out rules and for reference in the presence of a dispute. There are some rules that will come into force on the 1st January 2025, most of which have been well documented. There are however some that piqued our interest…
World Series / Elite Teams
Based on the results of this year’s racing, there will be multi-year team status available from the 2026 season for any team finishing in the top 10 overall this year. Any top ten team in 2025 will be awarded a two year World or Elite team status for the 2026 and 2027 seasons. From 2028, this will grow to three years, based on the 2027 results. Teams ranked 11th to 15th get the single year status.
There’s also an interesting point to add to this, that if a team fails to participate at a World Cup with a single rider, they are ejected from the competition and will not be able to register for Elite or World Series status the following year. Very much a use it or lose it vibe here. This should, in theory, prevent any team that was lucky enough to be in the top 15 this year, from abusing that luck. We couldn’t find out what happens when or if this occurs, and whether the next ranked team is invited to register in their stead.
“Multi-year UCI MTB WORLD SERIES TEAM status
From 2026, the UCI will award multi-year UCI MTB WORLD SERIES TEAM status. The status will be awarded as follows: – Top 10 teams ranked in the 2025 UCI Team Ranking are offered a 2 years status (2026-2027) For the sake of clarity, teams ranked 11th to 15th are offered a 1-year status (2026) – Top 10 teams ranked in the 2027 UCI Team Ranking are offered a 3 years status (2028-2030) For the sake of clarity, teams ranked 11th to 15th are offered a 1-year status (2028) (text modified on 1.01.25).
UCI MTB WORLD SERIES TEAMS have the obligation to participate with minimum 1 rider at all UCI World Cup events. If this is not the case the UCI ELITE MTB TEAM UCI MTB WORLD SERIES TEAM status is removed immediately and the team is not able to register as a UCI ELITE MTB TEAM UCI MTB WORLD SERIES TEAM for the following season. In this case there is no refund of the registration fees. (text modified on 1.01.25).“
Wild Cards
With the maximum amount of teams being set and the Continental Series providing the pathway between World Cup and National level racing, the other avenue is wild cards.
Here’s the chat from the UCI Regulations:
A maximum of five wild card invitations to be granted UCI ELITE MTB TEAM / UCI MTB WORLD SERIES TEAM status can be issued at the discretion of the UCI during the registration process. Criteria to award the wild cards will be based on the:
- UCI team ranking, current and previous season
- Profile of any individual riders
- UCI Team composition (multi-category, multi-gender)
- Profile of team sponsors (out of industry, global, etc.)
- Media profile of team (social media, etc.)
- Any injury issues during current or previous season
- Anti-doping history
Prior to issuing a decision, the UCI can request the production of information or documents to assess the criteria above.
Whilst team and other rankings as well as team composition make perfect sense in terms of selecting wild cards, we would hope that ‘profile of individual riders’ is a way of solving a tie break situation rather than inviting a rider to compete based on a large following, rather than the merit of their race results. There is no clarification as to whether any of these criteria are subordinate to the others.
It seems unlikely that say, Cristiano Ronaldo, with his 645 million Instagram followers (the most followed person on Instagram), or Selena Gomez (423 million followers on Instagram), are going to rush out and get their 75 UCI points so they can rock up to Bielsko-Biala in May.
