What is the WorldTour in cycling?
The UCI WorldTour is the top tier of men's professional road cycling. It is both a calendar of the biggest races and the licence held by the teams allowed to ride them, known as WorldTeams.
The UCI, cycling's world governing body, hands out WorldTour licences in multi-year cycles. Under the current system a team's licence depends heavily on its UCI points over the previous three seasons, which is why points-hunting matters so much late in a season. Teams at the bottom of the three-year ranking can lose their place to the strongest ProTeams.
A WorldTeam has the right, and the obligation, to start the WorldTour races: the Grand Tours, the Monuments and the major one-week stage races. In exchange it must meet stricter standards on budget, staff, anti-doping programmes and rider contracts, including a higher minimum salary than lower tiers.
For riders, the WorldTour is where the money is. Almost all of the highest salaries in the sport are paid by WorldTeams, and the gap between a WorldTour domestique and a ProTeam rider of similar quality is often large. The women's equivalent is the Women's WorldTour, raced by Women's WorldTeams.
On howtoturnpro.com every WorldTeam has its own page with roster, estimated salaries and contract end dates. All salary figures are estimates from our published model unless a reported figure is shown.
See it on howtoturnpro.com
All WorldTeams with estimated salaries