The 2026 UCI Indoor Cycling World Championships will be held in Ludwigsburg, Germany, from 30 October to 1 November, with seven titles of UCI World Champion at stake. Two of those will be decided in cycle-ball – one for men, one for women – a specialty best described as football on bikes.
We take a look at this technical and demanding indoor cycling format which is on the competition programme alongside artistic cycling.
The history
Legend has it that a small dog ran in front of the wheel of Nick Kaufmann, a German-born artistic cyclist performing in the USA in the late 1800s. To spare the animal, he nudged it aside with his front wheel – and the idea of a ball game on bikes was born. In 1883, in Rochester, Kaufmann and fellow performer John Featherly played the first game with a polo ball.
Cycle-ball reached Germany in 1901, when Berlin-based artistic cyclists Paul and Otto Lüders presented it to the public, and from there ‘Radball’ spread across Central Europe. Two forms emerged – two-a-side in halls and six-a-side on grass – and both featured at the first UCI World Championships in Leipzig in 1930, won by Germany and France respectively. Today only the two-player indoor variant is recognised by the UCI.
Ludwigsburg will host the 89th edition of the UCI Indoor Cycling World Championships. Germany leads the all-time medal table with 35 gold medals, ahead of Czechia, Switzerland, Austria, France and Belgium. A women’s tournament was added to the UCI World Championships programme in 2023, and Germany has won all three editions so far.
The rules
Each team has two players, a goalkeeper and an outfield player, and the aim, as in football, is to score more goals than the opposition. Players control and shoot the ball with the front or rear wheel of their bike, or with their head; hands and feet are forbidden, except for the goalkeeper, who may use their hands inside the marked penalty area.
Matches are played on a 14 x 11 metre field enclosed by 30cm high boards, with 2 x 2 metre goals, over two seven-minute halves separated by a 90-second break. The referee, on foot inside the field, punishes fouls with free kicks or a four-metre penalty. As well as the UCI World Championships, a season-long UCI Cycle-ball World Cup has been held each year since 2002 and rewards the most consistent teams over a series of tournaments. Since 2025, the men’s tournament has comprised an Elite League for the top eight ranked teams and a Challenger League, where nations fight for promotion.
The bike and the ball
A cycle-ball bike weighs about 13kg and has a reinforced frame, a very short wheelbase and a fixed gear with no freewheel, so players can balance, stand still, ride backwards and accelerate explosively. The saddle sits far back – players appear to perch on a luggage rack – while the tall, distinctive handlebar makes remarkable ball tricks possible. The ball is 17-18cm in diameter, weighs 500-600g and is stuffed with horsehair.
The history-makers
Nobody has dominated cycle-ball like Czechoslovakia’s Jan and Jindřich Pospíšil. The brothers won 20 UCI world titles between 1965 and 1988, including 14 in a row from 1968 to 1981.
The modern era belongs to Austria’s Patrick Schnetzer. The Dornbirn goalkeeper has won eight UCI world titles since 2011 with Dietmar Schneider, Markus Bröll and, since 2021, Stefan Feurstein, plus nine overall victories in the UCI Cycle-ball World Cup, that Austria has won 11 times.
Germany’s answer has been Bernd Mlady, UCI World Champion with cousin Gerhard in 2017 and 2021 and then with Raphael Kopp – already crowned 2023 UCI World Champion alongside his own cousin André – in 2024 and 2025 when they beat Schnetzer and Feurstein 6-2 in the final before retiring.
In the women’s competition, Germany’s Judith Wolf and Danielle Holzer were unbeaten at last year’s UCI Indoor Cycling World Championships in Göppingen, Germany, conceding three goals in four matches and beating Switzerland’s Sava Baumann and Chiara Dotoli 6-1 in the final. Japan’s Sayaka Tokuhiro and Nana Yamashita won bronze.
Ludwigsburg 2026
With Mlady and Kopp now retired, the men’s Elite League is wide open. Schnetzer and Feurstein, silver medallists in 2024 and 2025, will be chasing Austria’s first title since 2022 and a ninth gold for Schnetzer. Switzerland’s Fröhlich brothers, Timon and Yannick, are among the major challengers. Wolf and Holzer defend the women’s crown on home boards, in a year when women also get their own UCI World Cup for the first time.
All in all, the UCI Indoor Cycling World Championships are cycle-ball’s ultimate annual test: three days in which the world’s best two-player teams compete for rainbow jerseys and a place in a history stretching back almost a century.