UCI Gravel World Championship 2025 - everything you need to know
Following much uncertainty, the UCI Gravel World Championships date and venue have just been announced. Here’s what we know and expect.
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[Images from SWpix]
There's been a lot of uncertainty since the UCI announced in late February that the Nice Gravel World Championship was not happening. However, the UCI and Golazo, the UCI Gravel World Series and Championship organisers, have finally (we hope) come up with a date and Venue. However, before we go into more detail, here’s what was announced last Friday. We have skipped the second half – the formality of the speeches from the powers that be, you can always find that on the UCI website if you want, but here are the bones of it.
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The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) is pleased to announce that the 2025 UCI Gravel World Championships, originally set to be hosted in Nice (France) on 18 and 19 October, will finally take place in the Zuid-Limburg region of the Netherlands on 11 and 12 October.
The Zuid-Limburg region will officially host the 2025 UCI Gravel World Championships in close collaboration with the municipalities of Maastricht, Beek, and Beekdaelen.
Organised by Golazo, this premier competition will ensure an exceptional experience for riders and spectators alike. Golazo is an international group active in the organisation of sporting events that brings unparalleled expertise in the delivery of premier cycling competitions.
The province of Limburg, of which the Zuid (South)-Limburg region is a part, was awarded the UCI Bike Region label by the UCI in 2016. It has already hosted several major UCI events, including the 2018 UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships and five editions of the UCI Road World Championships, held in Valkenburg in 1938, 1948, 1979, 1998, and 2012.
2023 UCI World Gravel Championships Italy SWPix11.jpg, by SWpix.com
Zuid-Limburg offers the perfect blend of challenging terrain and a region steeped in cycling tradition.
The 2025 UCI Gravel World Championships will be the fourth staging of the event after two editions in Italy – Veneto (2022) and the Province of Treviso-Veneto (2023) – followed by last year’s event in Flanders (Forest of Brabant), Belgium, also organised by Golazo.
Gravel is one of cycling’s fastest-growing disciplines, combining elements of road and mountain bike and takes place mainly on unpaved roads (gravel, forest tracks, farm roads and cobbles). The UCI World Championships in the discipline are open to both professionals (separate race) and amateurs. Amateurs qualify for the event through the UCI Gravel World Series and race by age group, while professionals are selected by their respective National Federations. All compete for the mythical UCI World Champion rainbow jerseys.
The region and what to expect
If you think the Netherlands is flat, the Zuid Limburg will floor that theory. Limburg is a region, almost cocooned between the far southeast point of the Netherlands, with the Belgian Ardennes to its south, Belgian Flanders to the west, and northern Germany off to the east. It’s a picturesque and rolling region, not too dissimilar to many rolling areas of agricultural region of England and northern Europe – and Valkenburg, where we think the race will start from, is just 96km east of Leuven, where last years’ title race was held, which gives quite a few clues as towards what to expect, but with some subtle differences.
2023 UCI World Gravel Championships Italy SWPix10.jpg, by SWpix.com
The region is very popular for road cyclists and has a long and deep culture of road and cyclocross racing. The biggest road race here is the Amstel Gold, one of the major spring classics, which takes place this coming weekend. The Amstel Gold is an incredibly tough race to win, as it twists around endless, often open and narrow country roads, with lots of short, steep climbs along the way, which means it’s nonstop in terms of intensity and with ever-shifting wind direction.
Okay, so that’s a road race – well, yes, but the gravel riding here takes on a similar flavour, only on a mix of fast and open gravel farm roads, pathways, and with a smattering of semi-technical forested climbs and descents; lovely stuff to ride, and familiar in riding style for many northern Europeans. The climbs are not huge, in fact, they rarely top 150m in altitude, but there are a lot of them, which take their toll, especially when ridden at near pro road race pace, which is what we anticipate to happen at the front end of the elite races.
South Limburg is also home to the Shimano Experience Centre, and for the past couple of years, the region has played host to the Limburg Gravel Fondo, a GWS round that is rebranded as Malry Grav this year, which is also a GWS round taking place on the weekend of 9-11 May. The upcoming World Championship races will be on similar terrain but not the same route and with similar high-level organisation – only this one will be organised by Golazo themselves.
We anticipate that this will once again be a fast race, one likely to be dominated by top road riders and not too dissimilar to last year’s championship race, though with a fair few more twists and short sharp climbs along the way (some on road), which will probably have an impact when it comes to thinning the field out.
The Marly Grav routes are around 60% gravel/off-road, the rest is on hardcore, and we would anticipate the same mix for this race.
This POV video from Trinity Racing’s (former) rider and Flying Scotsman Cameron Mason at the Gravel Fondo Limburg UCI Gravel World Series event should give something of a fair insight into what kind of racing and terrain to expect.
The backstory
This is the fourth edition of the UCI Gravel World Championship, and thus far things have not run exactly smooth and clear with the race; from venues, switching dates, TV coverage, terrain, and yet the last two editions have been top draw in terms of the racing, and the organisation (mostly) – at last, although there was a fair amount of criticism that last year’s race in Belgium wasn’t exactly gravel, more of a rough Belgian kermesse in terms of terrain style, and indeed the racing, and there is a fair justification in that one – even if much of the criticism came from outside of the tapes.
2023 UCI World Gravel Championships Italy SWPix7.jpg, by SWpix.com
Even so, gravel does indeed come in all shapes and sizes, and as the sport grows, it will get more and more serious, which in turn will entice the biggest names in the sport, and their pro “marginal gains” and maximum pains approach, which is inevitable.
Some time ago the UCI handed over the series organisation and management to the highly experienced and capable Belgian Golazo organization, who are involved with several other sports as well as cycling, and who also organise the UCI Gran Fondo World Series, and are involved in organising the 2025 Rwanda UCI World Championship along with ASO (Tour de France organisers).
As far we understand, the ultimate call where the host gravel championship venue will be largely down to the UCI, and we also understand that there is a hefty fee involved in acquiring the staging of a race, plus the associated organisational costs – which is common in cycling and other sports when it comes to major events.
Some time ago, the UCI announced the dates and venues for the next few World Championships, which met with mixed reactions from the gravel racing community.
Nice in France was all set to stage the 2025 race – though the UCI announced in February that this was not happening, and that a new host, date, and venue were in the works, following the powers that be in Nice assessing that closing down the centre of the city for a weekend was just not viable. Plus, the dates were also a direct clash with the Gran Fondo World Championship, with many of the age group riders competing in both events – something of an odd scheduling oversight.
As with most sagas in life, we have heard on the old cycling grapevine and have little doubt that the back story runs somewhat longer and is a tad complicated. Let’s all hope things are a little less shaky in the years to come.
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