With the 2026 UCI Gravel World Championships just days away, taking place on 10 and 11 October in Nannup, Australia, we look back at the history of a resolutely modern pursuit whose roots paradoxically stretch back to the very origins of cycling.
Sold-out races, dedicated bikes, champions from every background: gravel is experiencing spectacular growth and radiates an undeniable sense of modernity. Yet it has always been part of cycling. As soon as the bicycle became manoeuvrable enough to leave the velodrome, pioneers took it off the beaten track to explore the world across all kinds of terrain. Without knowing it, they were inventing gravel.
This is the very essence of cycling: getting on your bike and riding wherever you want, just as every child does, and from this spirit a whole scene was born, complete with its own equipment and events. Sitting between road and off-road, gravel today brings together countless professional and amateur riders from across the world, and plays a key role in the evolution of cycling.
European roots
Born in the 19th century, the bicycle first enabled mass mobility before giving rise to iconic events such as Liège-Bastogne-Liège (1892) and Paris-Roubaix (1896). At the time, most roads were cobbled or covered in gravel. Black-and-white photographs from the early Tours de France show riders climbing mountain passes through loose stones on heavy bikes without a derailleur. The word did not yet exist, but these pioneers were already practising what we now call gravel.
In 1955, in the United Kingdom, a group of cyclists founded the Rough-Stuff Fellowship, which presents itself as the first club of its kind in the world. 'Forty members who, in pursuit of their pastime, traverse the rougher and less beaten ways, attended the inaugural meeting of the Rough-Stuff Fellowship at the Black Swan pub in Leominster,' the club's website recalls.
The North American revival
Modern gravel took off in the 1990s, in North America. Founded in 1994 in Ontario, Canada, Paris to Ancaster is widely considered the first gravel event of the modern era. It pays homage to Paris-Roubaix, sharing its date in its inaugural edition.
“For over a century, the roads of northern Europe have hosted the world's most gruelling cycling races” its organisers explain. “The most famous of these, Paris-Roubaix, is contested each spring on unforgiving cobbled roads that have been preserved in their original state for over 100 years. Inspired by that Classic, Paris to Ancaster has been raced since 1994 on the roughest farm roads, trails, and gravel tracks we can find.”
Across the border in the United States, the discipline was gaining popularity at the same time, thought to have grown out of the bikepacking culture of the 1980s. The freezing Midwestern winters, which drove cyclists away from frozen trails, also played their part, as did more than 2.2 million kilometres of unpaved roads — a vast playground far from traffic. .
From Kansas to the world
The foundations of gravel as we know it today were laid in the mid-2000s. In 2006, Jim Cummins and Joel Dyke founded Dirty Kansas in the Flint Hills, a region renowned for its rolling gravel roads. The first edition, covering 200 miles (around 320 km), brought together 34 riders. By 2022, that number had grown to more than 4,000. In the meantime and following a petition, the event was renamed Unbound Gravel in 2020, as its former name was considered offensive to the indigenous peoples of the region.
Founded in 2009 in Michigan, Barry-Roubaix also pays homage to Paris-Roubaix and lays claim to the title of the world's largest gravel race.
A new kind of bike
Credit for the first gravel bike remains disputed, but many point to Salsa Cycles. In 2012, the Minnesota-based company launched the Warbird: more capable off-road than a road bike, and more comfortable and practical for carrying luggage than a cyclo-cross bike, with a longer wheelbase, more relaxed geometry, room for wider tyres, and mounting points for bikepacking. A new kind of bike had been born.
These innovations went on to benefit other disciplines. On the road, frames now accommodate wider tyres, which means greater comfort — an increasingly important asset as race organisers introduce more unpaved sections, even in the Grand Tours.
A discipline in its own right
Launched in 2022 in partnership with Belgian agency Golazo, the UCI Gravel World Series was an immediate success. In 2026, it features 45 events across every continent, serving as the qualification route for the UCI Gravel World Championships, which have been held since that same year. Paris to Ancaster featured on the calendar in 2025.
“The major success of gravel races are the discovery of new hidden backcountry roads where riders of all level, from world tour elite level to amateurs can all share the same routes during these mass participation events”, say the series' promoters.
The atmosphere is welcoming, but the racing is no less fierce, as Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney, road icon and 2023 UCI Gravel World Champion in the Elite Women category, makes clear: “I feel like hearing about gravel beforehand I was like oh, sweet we’ll just ride for long and then relax and have fun but it’s insanely hard."
“I feel like every single roadie should know that because I know at some points we were like 'oh, gravel is for people who don’t want want to really race' but it might be the opposite.”
This weekend in Nannup, thousands of riders will once again discover this for themselves on the trails of Western Australia. More than 130 years after the first edition of Liège-Bastogne-Liège, gravel is a reminder that cycling has never truly left the roads less travelled.