The Professional Cycling Council (PCC), the body bringing together stakeholders in men's and women's professional road cycling, met on 1 and 2 September at the headquarters of the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) in Aigle, Switzerland.
At the start of the meeting, UCI President David Lappartient, PCC President Tom Van Damme and PCC members paid tribute to British rider Finlay Tarling, who tragically died at the age of 19 following an accident on 14 August during stage 8 of the Volta a Portugal em Bicicleta.
Against this difficult backdrop, a large part of the meeting was devoted to rider safety, in particular GPS rider safety tracking. In the absence of a joint proposal from the different stakeholder groups, the UCI stressed the urgent need to put in place, as quickly as possible, a dedicated safety system allowing the real-time location of riders and vehicles to be tracked at all professional road cycling events, starting with those in the UCI WorldTour and UCI Women’s WorldTour. Such a system had been implemented by the UCI for all categories at the UCI Road World Championships in 2025 (in Kigali, Rwanda), and will be again at this year’s UCI Road World Championships (in Montréal, Canada), as well as at future editions of the event. Given safety remains an absolute priority, the UCI will therefore establish protocols and a regulatory framework for the use of real-time tracking systems at races. UCI President David Lappartient reiterated that, in discussions on safety, stakeholders need to move past any disagreements on certain issues and act together. In his view, riders' safety requires this, and safety must never be sacrificed for commercial interests.
Still on the subject of safety, and at the initiative of SafeR – the body dedicated to safety in men's and women's road cycling –, the UCI wants to guarantee that the barriers used in the final hundreds of metres of stages and races, meet the standards resulting from the study carried out by the Haute École Spécialisée de Suisse Occidentale Valais-Wallis. This requirement will be introduced progressively, starting with UCI WorldTour and UCI Women's WorldTour races from the 2027 season, before being extended to all other race categories.
PCC members also held in-depth discussions about the consultation on the future of cycling launched at the start of 2026. A first summary of the contributions received was presented to members, along with the steps that will follow this initial phase. A summary document will be published after the UCI Management Committee meeting, to be held from 20 to 22 September in Montréal during the 2026 UCI Road World Championships. Following on from this consultation, discussions will be held with stakeholder representatives to work together on the initial guidelines for a reform of professional road cycling, which will be developed in collaboration with all sectors of the cycling community. These initial guidelines will be unveiled at the UCI Women’s WorldTour and UCI WorldTour Seminar to be held in Benidorm (Spain) on 9 and 10 December.
The PCC also approved several adjustments to the 2027 UCI WorldTour and UCI Women's WorldTour calendars. On the UCI Women's WorldTour calendar, the Vuelta España Femenina by Carrefour.es will take place from 3 to 10 October 2027, as confirmed by the PCC. Following the race’s move from May to October, the organiser of the Vuelta a Burgos Feminas (also in Spain) requested a change to its own race dates. It will now take place from 6 to 10 May 2027. On the UCI WorldTour calendar, Eschborn-Frankfurt (Germany) will return to its traditional date of 1 May in 2027, at the request of its organiser.
Regarding the main regulatory changes, the PCC confirmed the points scale for riders competing in disciplines other than road cycling. This decision follows the adoption of the regulatory framework at the Management Committee meeting in Kigali in September 2025. The introduction of this scale completes the system allowing road teams to score points in the UCI Team Ranking when they enter their riders in major events (UCI World Championships and UCI World Cups) in other disciplines (cyclo-cross, track, mountain bike and gravel, UCI World Championships only for the latter discipline). The scale was established based on simulations carried out during the 2026 season. The PCC also approved the principle of allowing organisers of National Tours (stage races) to create an additional distinctive jersey for the best rider of the nationality of the event. The conditions for introducing this jersey have yet to be defined.
All decisions taken at the PCC meeting will be submitted to the UCI Management Committee at its next meeting. They will only come into effect once confirmed by the members of the UCI's executive body.