UAE Team Emirates XRG

UAE Team Emirates XRG grew out of the Italian Lampre squad, registered in 1999 as Lampre-Daikin and carried through a run of co-sponsors as Lampre-Fondital, Lampre-Farnese Vini, Lampre-ISD and, from 2013, Lampre-Merida. Its strongest period in Italian colours was 2008, when Alessandro Ballan took the world road race title and Damiano Cunego won Il Lombardia and the Amstel Gold Race. Michele Scarponi was awarded the 2011 Giro d'Italia for Lampre-ISD after Alberto Contador's disqualification.

The Italian licence then changed hands in messy circumstances. It was sold in 2016 to the Chinese group TJ Sport, whose project unravelled when its backer fell ill, and Emirati investors stepped in that December to secure the WorldTour place. The team rode the opening weeks of 2017 as UAE Abu Dhabi before becoming UAE Team Emirates, and has held an Emirati licence since. Mauro Gianetti came in as general manager with the Emirati takeover, and Joxean Fernández Matxín joined him to run the sporting side, a partnership that went back to Saunier Duval in 2004.

Tadej Pogačar joined as a neo-professional for 2019 and became the rider the squad is organised around. He won the Tour de France in 2020, 2021, 2024 and 2025, the Giro d'Italia in 2024, and the world road race title in 2024 and 2025. The Classics programme has followed him too, with Il Lombardia in 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024, the Tour of Flanders in 2023 and 2025, and Liège-Bastogne-Liège in 2021 and 2024.

Some of the Italian squad survived the handover. Diego Ulissi joined Lampre in 2010 and stayed until the end of 2024, riding for it under both the Lampre and UAE names, and Rui Costa arrived at Lampre-Merida in 2014 as reigning world champion and carried on into the Emirati era. Colnago has supplied the bikes since 2017. XRG, the low-carbon energy arm of the Abu Dhabi oil company ADNOC, was added to the name for 2025.