UEC Cyclo-cross European Championships

The UEC Cyclo-cross European Championships are the European title races in cyclocross, held over one weekend in early November by the Union Européenne de Cyclisme. Six titles are decided, for elite, under-23 and junior women and men, and riders start for their countries in national jerseys. The championships go to a different host each year: Pontchâteau in France in 2023, Pontevedra in Spain in 2024 and Middelkerke in Belgium in 2025.

Six European cyclocross titles in one weekend

The championships take one weekend in early November, and six jerseys are handed out: elite, under-23 and junior, for women and for men. Riders are entered by their national federations, up to eight per country in each race, and they start in national jerseys instead of the kit of their trade teams. The one exception is the world champion, who must start in the rainbow jersey. Each winner gets a gold medal and the European champion’s jersey. The 2025 championships in Middelkerke drew 283 riders from 25 countries, the most countries the event had seen.

The elite men’s European title dates from 2015

For more than a decade this was a championship without an elite men’s race. When Tábor hosted in November 2003, the titles were for women, under-23 men and juniors. The elite men got theirs in 2015 in Huijbergen, in the Netherlands. Lars van der Haar and Wout van Aert had dropped the field by the middle of the race. Van Aert surged on the sixth lap, before a section with two long sandy run-ups, and seemed to have Van der Haar in trouble. Van der Haar reeled him in, made contact with two laps to go and took the lead as the run-up approached on the last lap. “It was like I drove up against a wall,” Van Aert said afterward.

Belgium against the Netherlands for the men’s title

Every elite men’s champion from 2015 to 2025 was Dutch or Belgian. Mathieu van der Poel won three in a row; the third, in Silvelle in Italy in 2019, came by three seconds over Eli Iserbyt after the Belgian team had spent the race trying to stop him. Michael Vanthourenhout won in Namur in 2022 and again in the rain of Pontchâteau in 2023. That second race also brought the first elite men’s medal for a rider from neither country: Cameron Mason of Great Britain was second. A year later in Pontevedra, Thibau Nys rode away from the Spaniard Felipe Orts on the last lap for his first major title.

Sand and sea in Middelkerke: a different course every November

Because the host changes, so does the kind of race. In 2021 the championships were decided on the VAM-berg in the Netherlands. In 2025 they were held on and around the military domain of Lombardsijde in Middelkerke, on a course with no stairs, beams or bridges, only sand and dunes and a stretch of beach. Inge van der Heijden took the lead at the first sand section of the women’s race and was never caught; behind her Lucinda Brand at one point chose to ride through the seawater. The men’s race came down to a sprint from a group of four, and Toon Aerts won it for his second European title, nine years after his first.