Team Visma | Lease a Bike 2026: Danish Dynamite in Spring
For Team Visma | Lease a Bike, the 2026 racing season has already been a resounding success, with more than its fair share of emotional highs and lows. Central to this were Wout van Aert’s battles in the Classics and Monuments in the spring, and Jonas Vingegaard’s attempt to add the Giro d’Italia—and thus the third Grand Tour—to his trophy collection. Now, both the Men’s and Women’s Teams are looking ahead to the Tour de France and the Tour de France Femmes.
The king of the cobbles
Just like in recent years, the highly anticipated spring classics were dominated by superstars Tadej Pogacar and Mathieu van der Poel. Van Aert, who has been plagued by bad luck and serious injuries in recent years, started out as something of an underdog, and his chances of winning were the subject of much debate. In Milan-Sanremo, however, Van Aert managed to send a clear message to the competition right off the bat: with an impressive attack within the final kilometer, the Belgian secured third place, just behind the leaders Pogacar and Pidcock. This strong result seemed to give him wings: At Dwars door Vlaanderen, he was only caught by Filippo Ganna a few meters before the finish, and in the Ronde van Vlaanderen, he finished fourth.
Everything pointed to the fact that the fate of that spring would be decided in the “Hell of the North”: One could almost feel that the time had finally come for Van Aert to conquer Paris-Roubaix, that the moment had arrived. It turned out just as it should: After a dominant day at the front of the race, he entered the Velodrome alongside Pogacar, let the world number one lead the final lap, and then defeated him in the sprint.
Many second places
Paris-Roubaix was also an emotional day for the Women’s Team. Just a few weeks after her father’s death, Marianne Vos lined up at the start to secure the victory alongside a strong classics team. Vos and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot entered the velodrome together with Franziska Koch: The German ultimately won the race in a sprint finish.
This pattern had also held true in the other races: While Lieke Nooijen, Nienke Veenhoven, and Ferrand-Prévot were able to secure podium finishes, the team is still waiting for its first victory of the season.
The Grand Tour Trilogy
Jonas Vingegaard shone in the first half of the racing season and is fulfilling a personal dream.
In the first World Tour races of the year, the team’s general classification riders delivered impressive performances. Vingegaard, in preparation for the Giro, won the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya and Paris-Nice; Matteo Jorgenson was narrowly beaten by overall winner Del Toro at Tirreno-Adriatico. The team thus approached the major challenge of winning the Giro d’Italia for the second year in a row with great confidence and as the clear favorite, especially since last year’s Vuelta runner-up, Joao Almeida of the dominant UAE Team Emirates-XRG, had to withdraw at the last minute. Although Vingegaard stated he had no intention of emulating Pogacar’s dominant 2024 Giro, that is ultimately what happened: The team won every mountain finish, with Vingegaard himself claiming five stage victories.
A very special moment was Sepp Kuss’s victory on Stage 19: The team’s elite climber thus completed his own “Grand Tour Stage Trilogy.” Young rider Davide Piganzoli also shone, achieving an impressive 8th place in the overall standings. With his victory in the Giro, Vingegaard joins a very short list of riders who have won all three Grand Tours. At the Tour de France in July, the Dane aims to challenge his longtime rival Pogacar for the Tour victory—and he already seems to be in top form.
Two out of three:
The Women’s Team has already competed in two of the three major stage races. At the Vuelta a España Femenina, Marion Bunel finished third overall, and Femke de Vries placed sixth at the Giro d’Italia Women. After a strong 2025 season and a racing year that has been good so far but not outstanding, the team is pinning all its hopes on the Tour de France Femmes in August.
The next races at a glance.
June
Copenhagen Sprint
Date: 13./14.06.
Place: Denmark
Participants: Veenhoven, Fidanza, Hengeveld, Nooijen, Sadnik, Vigié / Doull, Fiorelli, Huising, Mattio, Kielich, van Belle, Zingle
Tour de Suisse
Date: 17.-21.06.
Place: Switzerland
Participants: Brennan, Lemmen, Barré, Doull, Huising, Kelderman, Kruijswijk
Tour de Suisse Women
Date: 17.-21.06.
Place: Switzerland
Participants: de Vries, Reijnhout, Sadnik, Chladonová, Van Dam
Volta Ciclista a Catalunya Femenina
Date: 19.-21-06.
Place: Catalonia
Participants: Vos
July
Tour de France
Date: 04.-26.07.
Place: France
Participants: Vingegaard, Campenaerts, van Aert, Jorgenson, Armirail, Kuss, Tulett, Affini
August
Tour de Pologne
Date: 03.-09.08.
Place: Poland
Participants: Men's WorldTeam
Lidl Deutschland Tour
Date: 19.-23.08.
Place: Germany
Participants: Men's WorldTeam
Renewi Tour
Date: 19.-23.08.
Place: Belgium
Participants: Men's WorldTeam
Tour de France Femmes
Date: 01.-09.08.
Place: France
Participants: Ferrand-Prévot, Vos, de Vries
Lloyds Tour of Britain Women
Date: 19.-23.08.
Place: Great Britain
Participants: Women's WorldTeam
September
Vuelta a España
Date: 22.08.-13.09.
Place: Spain
Participants: van Aert, Brennan, Nordhagen, Tulett, Kruijswijk, Graat, Huising, Hagenes, Fiorelli
Further information on the team: https://www.teamvismaleaseabike.com/
Our author
Antje Thomas
Antje Thomas has been working as a marketing manager at Lease a Bike since 2023, where she draws on her many years of expertise to assist with tasks such as content creation. The company bike of her dreams, which she’s already riding all over town: a Riese & Müller Culture Mixte vario.