The 2027 World Cycling Championships will take place in Haute-Savoie, eastern France, the International Cycling Union (UCI) announced at its congress on Thursday on the sidelines of the Worlds in Wollongong, Australia. France and the Netherlands were the two countries in the running to win these “Super World Championships”, now bringing together every pre-Olympic year all the disciplines of cycling, from road to BMX via track and mountain biking, including in disabled sports.
19 disciplines represented
This expanded format 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 World Mountain Bike Championships have met a 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 from 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.
A candidacy rejected by the inhabitants of Haute-Savoie
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”.