Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe) has added the UAE Tour to his 2026 race calendar, which will see him line up against Tadej Pogačar's UAE Team Emirates in their home WorldTour stage race.
The Belgian's revised schedule, confirmed by Het Laatste Nieuws on Saturday, sees him start the seven-stage WorldTour race on February 16 and means he will postpone his traditional high-altitude training camp on Mount Teide.
It means Evenepoel and his new Red Bull-backed squad will face UAE Team Emirates, in a race the Emirati outfit UAE Emirates has traditionally targeted. Even with Pogačar absent – the Slovenian is skipping the event to focus on Paris-Roubaix – UAE Team Emirates will prioritise a win and field a roster led by Mexican rider Isaac del Toro.
Evenepoel, who won the race in 2023, is scheduled to race the event again. His revised spring now begins at the Challenge Mallorca on January 29, followed by the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana in early February, before the UAE Tour.
The decision marks a slight change from the perceived focus on energy preservation and early-season altitude camp. As we reported last month, Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe's Head of Sport Zak Dempster has built Evenepoel's 2026 preparation around 'kilojoule management' – identifying which races drain energy reserves without corresponding benefit.
That said, the UAE Tour, with its controlled desert conditions and mountain-top finishes at Jebel Jais and Jebel Hafeet, offers consistent high-intensity racing miles in predictable weather in contrast to the Classics.
Dempster's broader energy saving plan underpins his decision to skip Paris-Nice. He has described the combination of the French stage race and the Volta a Catalunya as 'super dangerous' for a rider targeting both the Ardennes classics and the Tour de France.
This means Evenepoel's first major stage-race assessment under the new programme will come at the UAE Tour against riders such as Del Toro, followed by further tests at the Volta a Catalunya and the Tour de France in July.
