It’s that time of year again. Europe might still be in the depths of winter, but a new WorldTour season is about to get underway at the Santos Tour Down Under in Adelaide. As ever, a new season means changes to team names, the equipment those teams use, and of course the riders on those teams.
If you’re anything like us, you probably find it hard to keep up with all the transfers that happen ahead of a new season. And as you start to watch a new year’s racing unfold, you’ll probably find yourself surprised about who’s racing where.
So as the 2025 WorldTour season kicks off we’ve pulled together this handy guide to the biggest WorldTour and ProTeam transfers, with pictures, to help familiarise you with the new rider-and-kit combinations. This is far from an exhaustive list – there are literally hundreds of transfers each season – but if you feel like we’ve missed someone of note, please let us know in the comments, ideally with a link showing the rider in their new kit!
With all that said, let’s get underway, starting with the women’s peloton. And boy have there been some changes there.
Women’s peloton
Rider transfers don’t get much bigger than this. After four storied years with SD Worx-Protime, and after much conjecture about where she’d end up in 2025, Demi Vollering is racing with FDJ-Suez through for the next two years. That one move alone makes for a very tantalising season ahead as Vollering faces off against her old teammates.
Vollering isn’t the only big name coming across to FDJ-Suez in 2025. The French team also picks up the French national champion: Juliette Labous (from DSM-Firmenich PostNL). A more than handy support rider for Vollering and others, while also capable of her own great results.
The ever-aggressive Swiss rider Elise Chabbey also comes across to FDJ-Suez after spending her first four years in the WorldTour with Canyon-SRAM. Fair to say the French team has recruited well for this season (the best of any women’s team according to ProCyclingStats).
Vollering’s move to FDJ-Suez is the highest-profile transfer of the year – male or female – but Elisa Longo Borghini‘s isn’t far behind. The reigning Giro d’Italia champion joins UAE Team Emirates for three years after six great seasons with Lidl-Trek.
You won’t see ELB in regular team kit in road races until mid year at the earliest, though – she’s the reigning Italian champ and has a terrific tricolore to show for it.
Joining Longo Borghini on the move from Lidl-Trek to UAE Team Emirates is former Aussie champ Brodie Chapman. Might we see her back in a green and gold ensemble after Aussie Road Nationals in Perth this week?
Lidl-Trek might have lost some big names, but the American team still has plenty to be excited about. Four big-name riders have made the switch to Lidl-Trek in 2025, including a pair of riders from Visma-Lease a Bike: Dutch time trial champ Riejanne Markus …
… and silver medalist from the Paris Olympics time trial, Anna Henderson.
Kiwi climbing talent Niamh Fisher-Black also joins Lidl-Trek after an impressive 2024 with the mighty SD Worx-Protime. She’s got a three-year deal with Lidl-Trek and will race in her new colours for the first time at the upcoming Tour Down Under. Her growing fanbase will be hoping she gets more opportunities to ride for herself at Lidl-Trek.
And last but not least for Lidl-Trek, Tour de France Femmes stage winner Emma Norsgaard also joins the fold after four years with Movistar. 2024 wasn’t Norsgaard’s best season ever so she’ll be hoping a new team means a return to the top.
From one Danish rider to another. After a tough season with FDJ-Suez (her fifth with the French team), Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig has made the switch to Canyon-SRAM zondacrypto on a two-year deal. Based on her recent Instagram post, Uttrup Ludwig is reasonably excited about the move.
Speaking of riders who had a tough year, Swiss powerhouse Marlen Reusser will be hoping for a better 2025 as she kicks off a three-year contract with Movistar. Side note: this is the sweetest new-year-new-team photo we’ve seen so far.
Men’s peloton
Two of the biggest transfers in the men’s peloton aren’t to a WorldTour team but to the second-division Tudor Pro Cycling. As Jonny Long noted in a recent edition of Spin Cycle, seeing two-time world champ Julian Alaphilippe (ex Soudal-QuickStep) in Tudor colours is going to take some getting used to.
Marc Hirschi is the other big name joining the Swiss ProTeam setup, the 26-year-old kicking off a three-year stint after leaving the all-conquering UAE Team Emirates.
Speaking of big-name riders moving to second-division teams, you’ve probably been following the saga of Tom Pidcock‘s move to Q36.5. The 25-year-old Briton has signed on with the Swiss outfit for three years, but if there are any photos of him in Q36.5 kit on the internet yet, we haven’t seen them. For now you’ll have to make do with this mock-up I just slapped together in Photoshop.
The biggest transfer among Grand Tour contenders is that of Vuelta a España runner-up Ben O’Connor. The West Australian has been with French team Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale for four years, but for the next two he’ll be with his ‘home team’, Jayco AlUla. How are we feeling about the purple kit, folks?
Making way for O’Connor at Jayco AlUla is 2018 Vuelta a España winner Simon Yates who leaves the Aussie squad after turning pro there back in 2014. Yates is off to Visma-Lease a Bike where he’ll be both a super-domestique in the biggest races for Jonas Vingegaard, and a leader in his own right at other times.
There’s been quite a shake-up over at Redbull-Bora-Hansgrohe with nine riders in and another nine out. Among those joining the German outfit are the controversial Italian Gianni Moscon, former Spanish champ Oier Lazkano, the Kiwi duo of Laurence Pithie and Finn Fisher-Black, Belgian talent Maxim Van Gils, and Slovenian Giro d’Italia stage winner Jan Tratnik.
According to ProCyclingStats, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe is the men’s team that’s done the best out of the 2024-2025 transfer window (factoring in the points gained and points lost), but XDS Astana isn’t too far behind having made a whopping 14 changes for this season (almost half the team).
Among the additions to the Kazakh team are Kiwi road champ (and two-time track world champion) Aaron Gate, Tour de France stage winner Wout Poels, and Colombian climber Sergio Higuita. But the biggest name joining the team in 2025 is eight-time Giro d’Italia stage winner Diego Ulissi who has signed on for two years, and looks positively thrilled about it.
And finally, here are another two changes (of the more than 130 in the men’s WorldTour!) that might take some getting used to. Aussie climber Lucas Hamilton has joined Ineos Grenadiers after spending his entire career so far with the GreenEdge setup (Jayco AlUla).
Meanwhile, Tour of Flanders winner Kasper Asgreen joins EF Education-EasyPost after seven years (and plenty of pillow fights) at Soudal-QuickStep.
Who have we missed? Which transfers are going to take you the longest to get used to?
Did we do a good job with this story?