The men’s race of the 2026 UCI Gravel World Championships is on Sunday, October 11, at 10:10 a.m. in Nannup, Western Australia, which is Saturday at 10:10 p.m. Eastern in the United States. Florian Vermeersch of Belgium defends the title. Three WorldTour riders start, and his main rivals are gravel specialists who ride for one trade team the rest of the year.
When is the men’s gravel world championship and where to watch it
The start is at 10:10 a.m. Australian Western Standard Time, which is 3:10 a.m. on Sunday in the United Kingdom and 4:10 a.m. in the Netherlands and Belgium. FloBikes shows the race live in the United States and Canada from 10 p.m. Eastern on Saturday. In Australia it is on SBS On Demand from 9:45 a.m. in Nannup. Sporza streams it in Belgium, in the Netherlands it is listed on Eurosport 1 and HBO Max, and in the United Kingdom on TNT Sports. Our watch page has the links per country.
The race is 144 kilometers long with 3,713 meters of climbing, and at least 80 percent of it is gravel. Last year’s course in the Netherlands had about 180 kilometers and 1,650 meters of climbing. The start list has 107 riders. Last year 279 men started, 45 of them Belgian, and Belgium has seven on this list.
Florian Vermeersch: three weeks of training for one day
Vermeersch won last year’s title with a solo of about 20 kilometers, after finishing second in 2023 and 2024. No rider has stood on the men’s podium more often. He rides the road for UAE Team Emirates-XRG, prepared for Nannup for three weeks and trained in the rainbow jersey every day. “I prepared and trained with the intention of winning,” he told Het Laatste Nieuws, in an interview reported by WielerFlits and translated from Dutch by WatchCycling. “It has been too long, and I could do with a win.”
Vermeersch pays for his own flights and his stay, and his team supplies two bikes, wheels and tires. In return for the trip he rides the Tour of Guangxi, which starts in China on Tuesday, October 13. The other WorldTour riders at the start are his Belgian teammate Stan Dewulf and Connor Swift of Great Britain. Wout Alleman, who took silver at the recent European championships, misses the race after a crash.
Swenson, Beers and Würtz Schmidt: one team, three countries
Three of his rivals are teammates at Specialized Off-road and race here for three countries. Mads Würtz Schmidt of Denmark won The Traka 360, Unbound Gravel 200 and a second European title this year. Unbound and The Traka give no UCI points, so his place on the start grid is uncertain. Keegan Swenson of the United States, fifth in 2023, broke his pelvis early this year and came back to win SBT GRVL. He leads the Life Time Grand Prix and gives up its race in Arkansas on the same day to be in Nannup.
Matt Beers of South Africa, four times a winner of the Cape Epic and second at Unbound this year, rides the championships for the first time since 2022. Lukas Pöstlberger of Austria, a former Giro d’Italia stage winner, won The Traka 200 and The Gralloch this year and came to Nannup early to ride the course.
Who pays for a gravel world championship?
The championships pay no prize money, and most riders pay for the trip themselves or through their trade teams. British riders cover travel and accommodation and buy their national kit, at 60 pounds for a jersey or 120 for a race suit. “I think it’s a bit odd for us to have to buy our own kit from our national federation to represent our country,” British champion Sophie Wright told Cyclingnews. The Dutch federation houses its riders, and they buy their own flights.
Vermeersch calls Nannup a course for powerhouses
The first 15 kilometers are nearly flat, and the next 30 or so have 1,000 meters of climbing, the hardest of it on Brockman, 2.4 kilometers at 8.2 percent. The men then ride a loop of under 20 kilometers that the women skip, over the Arcadia climb, 2.7 kilometers at 7.5 percent, before Ellis Creek, 2 kilometers at 9.1 percent.
Vermeersch describes the climbs as even, seven to eight percent on average and never longer than two kilometers or ten minutes. “So it is a course for powerhouses,” he said in the same interview.
Belgian champion Daan Soete was ill and crashed in his build-up, and has ridden almost the whole route. He told Sporza that the gravel is fairly slippery, which makes it technical, and that he expects every man for himself in the first 100 kilometers. He thinks the climbing will come to about 3,000 meters, where the organizer lists 3,713.
The last 24.5 kilometers are a loop south of Nannup, and race director Stephen Gallagher expects the race to be won or lost on the 2.4-kilometer climb that opens it, 20 kilometers from the finish. The top of the last climb, Lindsay Road, is 3.5 kilometers from a finish on a wide paved road. The Bureau of Meteorology forecasts a cloudy Sunday of 8 to 16 degrees Celsius, with a 40 percent chance of rain and a west to southwesterly wind of 15 to 25 kilometers per hour.