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2026 UCI Gravel World Championships take place in Nannup, Australia
The 2026 UCI Gravel World Championships takes place in Nannup, Western Australia, marking the first edition of the UCI-sanctioned event held outside Europe. Race director Stephen Gallagher says the predominantly gravel-road course creates "a lot more variance around the type of rider who can win" than previous European editions. Specialists who had skipped recent editions, including Sofia Gómez Villafañe, Matt Beers and Keegan Swenson, are entering this year.
What this means
The new grid system and course design have already drawn specialists like Gómez Villafañe, Beers and Swenson back to a race they had skipped in recent years.
The first four UCI Gravel World Championships editions were held in Europe, starting in Italy, and were dominated by road professionals rather than dedicated gravel riders. In earlier editions, UCI points from road, mountain bike and cyclo-cross racing determined grid positions despite no UCI gravel points being available at the time, disadvantaging specialists who raced primarily unsanctioned gravel events. At Nannup, UCI Gravel World Series points now determine starting positions, with riders from other disciplines having half their points counted, placing dedicated gravel specialists higher in the field. The course itself is over 80 percent gravel, mostly hard-packed pea gravel on logging trails through pine plantations, state forests and farmland of the Blackwood Valley, split into three sections by flatter stretches of tarmac or pristine gravel. The course features wide gravel roads, enabling riders to move up through the field more easily than in previous editions. Mads Würtz Schmidt, the 2026 Unbound Gravel 200 winner, is competing and said "I think a World Championships with an Unbound peloton would be pretty special, so I hope the guys will come over and see the opportunity that it is to have a really cool, actual Gravel World Championships". Sofia Gómez Villafañe, who skipped the 2024 and 2025 editions, called it "the first real Gravel World Championships in terms of a course," adding "I think it's exciting for it to be somewhere new". Defending champion Florian Vermeersch, along with road and gravel riders like Marianne Vos, Tiffany Cromwell and Connor Swift, are also entered.
Sources
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