TotalEnergies will ride Pardus bikes from 2027 under a three-season deal with the Chinese brand. In the same announcement, it said it had not yet confirmed the budget that would put the team on the start line.
The agreement, announced on October 27, runs from 2027 to 2029 and replaces Cube after one season. In its press communiqué, the team said work was continuing to consolidate and finalise its budget for next season.
The deal covers the ProTeam, the U23 squad Vendée U – Primeo Energie and the U19 collective CREF. All three will race the SPK EVO G4 and ROBIN EVO G3 road bikes, with the GOMERA EVO for time trials. Pardus is based in Shandong province and is part of the Taishan Sports Industry Group. It splits its range into EVO, RS and SPORT tiers and markets EVO to WorldTour and professional teams.
Selected deals
Chinese bikes keep arriving, one tier down
Chinese-brand bike deals by the first season the team rides them, and the tier of the team
Selection of deals named in this article. Bars fade where a contract's end date is not reported.
General manager Stéphane Heulot said in the team's announcement that the deal was "an opportunity to build a close relationship between our riders, our performance department and their technical teams, so that the equipment can evolve as closely as possible to the needs encountered on the road." He called it Pardus's first major step at the highest level of international road racing.
Terry Gong, Pardus's deputy general manager, tied the agreement to the brand's expansion in Europe. He said Pardus had worked with the Chinese national team since the Rio Olympics.
The agreement adds to Chinese bike brands' growing presence in the European professional peloton. XDS supplies its X-Lab bikes to Astana in the men's WorldTour, while Quick Pro became Euskaltel-Euskadi's bike partner for 2026. Like Euskaltel-Euskadi, TotalEnergies is a ProTeam, so the Pardus deal expands that presence without adding another Chinese supplier to the WorldTeam ranks.
The budget question
TotalEnergies' title sponsorship ends after 2026 by mutual agreement. That closes a ten-year relationship, three seasons as Direct Energie and the rest as TotalEnergies from 2019, which brought more than 130 victories. In March, Heulot made finding a replacement title sponsor the team's priority.
On October 19, the team said it was missing from the UCI's list of teams registered for next season. It said its bank guarantee had been validated by the international authorities, but that ethical, financial and administrative work remained before its 2027 application could be completed.
Ouest-France reported that the guarantee was submitted on October 15 while talks with prospective sponsors continued. Wielerflits reported that 23 riders were under contract for 2027, with room for 25 if another sponsor joined. It said the team planned to operate on a minimal budget and that its future still depended on the UCI licence commission.
