CFP
· Sat 15 Aug 2026 · Pro cycling, no airbrush
Topic HubsRace ResultsRider NewsTransfer NewsRidersThe WireRacing 101In Depth
Headlines · 7 Aug 2026 · 1w ago

Primoz Roglic

Primoz Roglic has not retired. He leads Red Bull at the 2026 Vuelta a Espana, leaves the team on 31 December, and intends to race on in 2027.

By 13 min read · 7 Aug 2026
Career Ribbon · 2016-2026Grand Tour results marked

0GTWIN2016201720182019202020212022202320242025202612345VUELTA, 22 AUG

12019 Vuelta a Espana – first Grand Tour win
22020 Vuelta #2 – Tour de France 2nd
32021 Vuelta #3 – Olympic time trial gold
42023 Giro d'Italia
52024 Vuelta #4 – equals the record

Yes — Primoz Roglic is still racing, and he has not retired. He leads Red Bull–BORA–hansgrohe at the Vuelta a Espana from 22 August, leaves the team on 31 December, and intends to race on in 2027. The only thing genuinely unsettled is where.

Update — 11 August 2026

Lotto-Intermarché is now the newest reported possibility. Het Laatste Nieuws reported that the Belgian team is negotiating with Roglič and that the interest is mutual. AS subsequently referenced the Belgian report while covering Roglič’s uncertain Vuelta participation.

This is not a transfer announcement. The report says the deal is not complete, and neither Lotto-Intermarché, Red Bull–BORA–hansgrohe nor Roglič has announced an agreement. Until that changes, his 2027 team remains unsigned.

  • Pinarello-Q36.5 has been reported as a live option — but the Italian reporting is explicit that there is no agreement.
  • Bahrain Victorious was linked and has since ruled itself out.
  • Movistar and Soudal Quick-Step have also been reported as not in the running.

Treat any specific team attached to his name as informed guesswork until a signature appears. What is reported consistently is what he wants: genuine leadership, control of his own calendar, and a team willing to build a season around him at 37.

Did Primoz Roglic retire? Has Roglic retired?

No, on both counts. There has been no retirement announcement, and the rider himself has pushed back on the suggestion more than once — at one point telling reporters he wanted to race for another ten years. The confusion is understandable, because two separate things happened close together in 2026: he was absent from the Tour de France, and his team confirmed he was leaving at the end of the season. Neither is retirement. He skipped the Tour by choice to target the Vuelta, and the Red Bull exit is a transfer, not an exit from the sport.

What happened to Primoz Roglic?

In late July 2026 he was hit by a car while out training. He revealed the incident himself on Instagram on 31 July, posting a photograph of a large bruise on the back of his leg alongside the words: “Got hit by a car few days ago… I won’t be participating in San Sebastian and in Burgos unfortunately… not the best scenario, but it’s life, eh.”

He avoided the worst of it — severe bruising to the back of his thighs rather than any fracture — but it cost him both of his planned build-up races, the Clásica San Sebastián and the Vuelta a Burgos, in the final weeks before his only Grand Tour of the year. Coverage at the time framed it as a race against the clock to reach the Vuelta with any sharpness at all. His own verdict was more direct: “Now it’s all systems go towards La Vuelta, we work and hope things will turn around.”

That is the honest state of it. He is fit enough to plan for the Vuelta and says he will be there, but he arrives with almost no racing in his legs — Cyclingnews counted just 28 race days across the whole of 2026 before the collision.

Where is Primoz Roglic now, and what is he racing?

He is preparing for the Vuelta a España, 22 August to 13 September 2026 — the only Grand Tour on his calendar this year. The race is unusual this time: it starts abroad, with the Grand Départ in Monaco, crosses southern France and Andorra before dropping into Spain, and finishes in Granada rather than the traditional run into Madrid.

He is chasing something specific. Roglič has won the Vuelta four times — 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2024 — which puts him level with Spain’s Roberto Heras, who won in 2000 and then three years running from 2003. A fifth would make him the outright record holder. After that fourth win, Heras himself said he would not rule it out.

It will not be straightforward. Tadej Pogačar, who won a record-equalling fifth Tour de France in July, has been confirmed for his first Vuelta since 2019. The Vuelta is the one Grand Tour he has never won, so he arrives chasing the career set — and with it the Tour-Vuelta double in a single season, a feat only Jacques Anquetil, Bernard Hinault and Chris Froome have managed. There is a neat symmetry to it: at that 2019 Vuelta, Roglič won the first of his four titles and a 20-year-old Pogačar finished third with three stage wins.

Is Primoz Roglic leaving Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe?

Yes, and it is confirmed rather than rumoured. General manager Ralph Denk has stated publicly that Roglič’s time at the team ends on 31 December 2026, after three years, and framed it as an amicable parting: “Primož is a true sportsman and wants to continue, so I congratulate him.”

The reasoning is visible in the team sheet. Red Bull have built their general-classification future around younger riders — Remco Evenepoel and Florian Lipowitz both rode the 2026 Tour while Roglič sat it out. For a rider who has spent his career as the outright leader of whichever team he joined, that is a clear signal, and the reporting consistently describes him as looking for somewhere he would lead again.

Where will Roglic ride in 2027?

Nobody knows yet, and nothing has been signed. This is the part of the story where confirmed fact runs out, so it is worth being plain about the line.

Why he is still going: the Tour de France he never won

Strip away the contracts and this is a story about one gap in an otherwise extraordinary record. Roglič has won four Vueltas, the 2023 Giro d’Italia and Olympic time trial gold, plus a shelf of week-long stage races. He has never won the Tour de France.

The wound that will not close is 2020, when he carried the yellow jersey into the penultimate day and lost the race to Pogačar in a single time trial up La Planche des Belles Filles. A tilt at the 2027 Tour would come at 37, with his 38th birthday arriving that October — an age at which Grand Tour victories belong to legend rather than expectation. That is precisely why he is still here.

How old is Primoz Roglic?

He is 36, and turns 37 on 29 October 2026. That matters more here than it usually would, because age is the whole subtext of the retirement question. A rider chasing a first Tour de France win at 37 is doing something the sport almost never rewards, and every time he is absent from a start line, the assumption is that the end has arrived. So far it has not.

Why was Roglic not at the Tour de France in 2026?

Not because he retired — but not entirely by choice either, and it is worth being straight about that. Red Bull built their 2026 Tour team around Remco Evenepoel and Florian Lipowitz, and there was no place in it for Roglič. He was left out of the squad, and redirected his season to the Vuelta instead.

He has been candid about it. Asked whether the omission surprised him, he answered that if he could choose one race to win it would be the Tour de France — “it’s not a secret” — before adding, simply, “but the reality is different.” That is a rider accepting a decision, not one making it.

This is the single biggest reason the “has he retired?” question spiked in 2026. For most of the previous decade Roglič was a fixture of the July conversation. When a rider of that stature simply is not at the Tour, the natural assumption for a casual viewer is that something has ended. What actually happened is a team selection — which is also the clearest single explanation of why he is leaving Red Bull.

What has Roglic raced in 2026?

Less than usual, which is another reason the question keeps coming up. Cyclingnews counted just 28 race days across the whole season before the training collision at the end of July. The season included the Tour de Romandie in the spring and a first-ever appearance at the Tour de Suisse in June — a race he entered for a specific and rather unusual reason (see below) — and, with no Tour de France on his programme, a return to the Slovenian National Championships for the first time since 2020.

Then came the car. The Clásica San Sebastián and the Vuelta a Burgos, his final two sharpeners, both disappeared. He will start the Vuelta on 22 August about as under-raced as a Grand Tour favourite ever is.

The record almost nobody talks about

Roglič has won six of cycling’s seven major one-week stage races. The one missing from the set is the Tour de Suisse — which is precisely why, at 36, he turned up to make his debut there in June 2026, chasing a clean sweep no rider has ever completed.

He did not get it. Pogačar dominated the race and took the overall, with Roglič eighth. It is a small story that tells you a great deal about why he is still racing: deep into his thirties, with four Grand Tours already won, he was still going out of his way to chase a record for its own sake.

From ski jumping to the Vuelta: how he got here

Roglič did not come up through cycling at all. He was a ski jumper first, competing internationally from the age of 13 and winning the junior world team title in 2007, with a personal best of 185 metres on the giant hill at Planica.

Weeks after that junior world title, at Planica, he crashed catastrophically — airlifted to hospital unconscious. He escaped serious injury, but footage of the fall still circulates. He kept jumping for another four years, but never broke through at senior level, and retired from the sport in January 2011 at 21.

Cycling came afterwards, initially as something between rehabilitation and a way to fill the gap, and he turned professional embarrassingly late by the standards of the sport. The explosive power built on the ski jump translated into exactly the two things that would define him: time trialling, and short uphill finishes.

It is worth holding that story next to the retirement question. A rider who started this late, after a career-ending crash in a different sport, has a different relationship with the idea of stopping than someone who has been racing since they were a teenager.

The crashes that keep ending his Grand Tours

There is a harder reason the retirement question attaches itself to Roglič specifically, and it is not age. It is that his recent Grand Tours keep ending early, in ambulances and team cars rather than on podiums.

The list is genuinely grim. He abandoned the 2021 Tour de France after going down in a mass crash in the opening week. At the 2022 Tour he hit a safety hay bale on the cobbled Roubaix stage, dislocating a shoulder and injuring his back, carried on regardless, and finally climbed off after the Alps. Later that same season he was lying second at the Vuelta, four days from the finish, when a crash put him out of that too. Then in 2024 he crashed on consecutive stages of the Tour and withdrew before stage 13, his team explaining simply that “the impact on his body was just too much to continue.”

By the end of that run he had failed to finish any of his three most recent Tour starts. He has since spoken openly about having considered quitting the sport altogether after one of those crashes — which is precisely why the question in this article’s headline gets asked as often as it does. The difference between “considered retiring once” and “has retired” is the entire distance between the rumour and the fact.

Who he has to beat at the 2026 Vuelta

The obvious answer is Tadej Pogačar, and it is a considerable problem. Pogačar won a record-equalling fifth Tour de France in July and returns to the Vuelta for the first time since 2019, chasing the only Grand Tour missing from his collection. He beat Roglič at the Tour de Suisse in June. On current form he starts as the favourite in Monaco.

The route offers Roglič something, at least. The 2026 Vuelta is built for climbers rather than sprinters, with a long individual time trial around Jerez de la Frontera and a dense block of summit finishes — and time trialling married to short, savage uphill efforts is the exact combination that produced all four of his Spanish titles. If there is a course on which an under-raced 36-year-old can still ambush the best rider in the world, this is closer to it than most.

Will Roglic ride the Tour de France in 2027?

That is his stated ambition, and it is the reason the 2027 team question matters so much. Every report on his next move describes the same requirement: a squad that will build itself around him and take him to the Tour as its outright leader, rather than sign him as a prestige name or a road captain.

Whether such a team exists is the open question. The superteams have younger leaders and no room. A smaller outfit would be transformed by signing him, but would be gambling a season on a rider who turns 38 at the end of the 2027 season and whose last three Tours all ended in abandonment. Until someone signs him, a 2027 Tour start is an intention rather than a plan — but it is unambiguously the intention.

What happens if the Vuelta does not go to plan?

Worth being honest about, because it is the scenario that would actually put the retirement question back on the table. He arrives under-raced, bruised, and facing a Pogačar in the form of his life. A bad three weeks would leave him negotiating for a 2027 leadership role off the back of a poor final season with Red Bull — a materially weaker hand than the one he is holding now.

The counter-case is that Roglič has a long record of arriving at the Vuelta and winning it regardless of the run-up, and that Denk’s public framing — congratulating him for wanting to continue — is not the language of a team that expects him to stop. Neither reading is settled. What is settled is that he has not retired, and does not intend to.

The short version

  • Retired? No.
  • Still racing? Yes — the Vuelta a España, from 22 August 2026.
  • Leaving Red Bull? Yes, on 31 December 2026. Confirmed by the team.
  • Racing in 2027? That is his stated intention. No team signed.
  • Fit? Bruised from a training collision with a car, missed his build-up races, but says the Vuelta is on.
  • Age? 36, turning 37 on 29 October 2026.
  • Why no Tour de France in 2026? He was left out of Red Bull’s Tour squad and targeted the Vuelta instead — not injury, and not retirement.

Sources

CyclingFreePress is a cycling news digest. This page tracks a situation that changes: rider fitness, start lists and contract negotiations can all move quickly, and the transfer possibilities described here are reported speculation, not confirmed deals. The retirement and team-departure statements are attributed to the named sources. Last checked on the date shown above.

Timeline

Newest first · auto-updating

Older coverage →

More Headlines

Last 7 days

← All headlines