The Tour That Got Away: Why Primož Roglič Is Leaving Red Bull to Chase Yellow One Last Time

Curated by Gary Edgington · Transfer News

The most stirring transfer story of the 2026 season is not a teenager’s bidding war. It is a 36-year-old, watching this Tour de France from home while the team he rides for chases yellow without him, deciding that he is not finished with the one race that has always slipped through his fingers. Primož Roglič will leave Red Bull–BORA–hansgrohe at the end of this year, but he is not retiring. The reporting is consistent: the Slovenian wants one more contract, one more team built around him, and one more attempt at the Tour de France he has never won. Here is what is confirmed, what is still rumour, and what he is really chasing.

What is actually confirmed

Unusually for a transfer saga, this one begins with the team itself saying the quiet part out loud. Red Bull–BORA–hansgrohe general manager Ralph Denk has publicly confirmed the split. “Primož is a true sportsman and wants to continue, so I congratulate him,” Denk said, as reported by CyclingFlash. “He has had a fantastic time with us. It is also clear to me that his adventure with us ends on December 31.” Denk added that Roglič’s focus for the remainder of 2026 is “completely on the Vuelta a España,” after which he intends to keep racing — “this shows that he is a real sportsman and that he still loves this sport.” In other words, the departure is not a rumour to be denied but a plan both parties have accepted. What is not yet settled is the only question that matters: where he goes next.

Why the split, and why now

The reasons are written into this year’s Tour startlist. Red Bull have spent the past two seasons stacking their general-classification future on younger men — Remco Evenepoel and Florian Lipowitz, both of whom are riding the 2026 Tour inside the top ten while Roglič sits it out, his only Grand Tour of the year the Vuelta in the autumn. For a rider who has spent his career as the undisputed leader of whichever team he joined, that is an unmistakable signal. As Marca reported (via CyclingUpToDate and Escape Collective), Roglič is looking for a team where he would “once again” hold a genuine leadership role — a project offering, in Escape Collective’s phrasing of the reporting, “trust, leadership and a project that sees him as more than just a big name.” At a superteam with three or four riders capable of leading a Grand Tour, that room simply no longer exists for a 36-year-old.

The white whale

Strip away the contracts and this is a story about the one line missing from an otherwise glittering palmarès. Roglič has won the Vuelta a España four times and the Giro d’Italia, taken Olympic time-trial gold and a shelf of week-long stage races — but never the Tour de France. The wound that will not close came in 2020, when he carried the yellow jersey into the penultimate day only for Pogačar, his younger compatriot, to overturn a 57-second deficit in a single time trial up La Planche des Belles Filles and take the race away from him. Six years on, that remains the defining near-miss of his career, and by every account it is the reason he refuses to stop. A 2027 tilt at the Tour would come in the year he turns 38, an age at which Grand Tour victories are the stuff of legend rather than expectation — which is precisely what makes the ambition so compelling.

Where could he go?

This is where confirmed fact gives way to speculation, and it is worth being honest about the line. No destination has been agreed, and no team has publicly declared itself. The consensus of the reporting is that Roglič is most likely to land at a smaller WorldTour or second-division ProTeam — an outfit for whom an established Grand Tour winner would be a transformational signing, and which could plausibly build its entire season around him in a way the sport’s superpowers no longer will. That is a logical read rather than a reported deal, and readers should treat any specific team names attached to his future as informed guesswork until a signature appears. The wildcard is whether a squad is willing to gamble a leadership project on a rider entering his late thirties, or whether the market values him instead as a road captain and mentor — a very different, and less romantic, role than the one he is chasing.

The other reading

It is worth holding the counter-case in view, too. Denk’s warmth in confirming the exit — the language of congratulation rather than conflict — is the tone of a farewell, and some in the sport will wonder whether a veteran chasing the Tour at 37 is romance winning out over realism, particularly given the run of crashes that has interrupted his recent Grand Tours. Nothing about 2027 is guaranteed: not the team, not the form, not the freedom to lead. What is clear is that Roglič himself, through Denk’s account, is choosing to keep going rather than bow out on a diminished role — and that intent, at least, is not in dispute.

Why it matters

Roglič is one of the finest stage racers of his generation, and there is a real chance he ends his career without the prize the wider public counts above all others. His next move is therefore less a transfer than a referendum on how he wants the story to end: as a contented champion winding down, or as a late-career romantic taking one more swing at the race that broke his heart. For the background to why the Tour looms so large over every rider’s legacy, our primer on how the Tour de France works sets the scene, and our explainer on how teams are built around a leader explains exactly the kind of support Roglič is now shopping for. Wherever he signs, the sport will be watching to see whether the man who has won almost everything can, at the very last, win the thing he wants most.

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