The last world championships organized in France dated back to 2000, in Plouay, in Morbihan.
The expanded format of the meeting will thus offer 13 disciplines next year in Glasgow, Scotland, and will increase to 19 disciplines in 2027 during the World Championships which will take place from September 11 to 26 in Haute-Savoie where the Mountain Bike Worlds met with great success this summer in Les Gets.
“It is a great satisfaction for French cycling which will bring all the spotlight to our sport.
My ambition is that it appears at the same level as a Rugby World Cup or a Euro football ”, reacted to AFP the president of the French Cycling Federation (FFC), Michel Callot.
He also welcomed the return, as part of these “Super Worlds, of the Road World Championships which will take place for the first time in France since those organized in 2000 in Plouay.
The queen event, the road race, will take place on a course which will be the copy-and-paste of that of the 1980 Worlds won by Bernard Hinault, on a circuit taking the ascent of the mythical Côte de Domancy (2.7 km to more than 8% on average).
The French and Dutch candidacies were decided by a vote of the UCI Management Committee which met on Tuesday and Wednesday and which also designated Montreal as the organizing city of the 2026 World Cycling Championships on the road, one after Rwanda and two years after Switzerland.
However, the French candidacy is not unanimous in Haute-Savoie where several appeals, the first of which was rejected by the Administrative Court of Grenoble, have been filed by a group of associations and elected environmentalists who castigate "a project of the Twentieth century".
After Glasgow in 2023, Zürich in 2024, Kigali in 2025, Montreal which will host the World Championships in 2026.
