U.S. Gravel National Championships head north to Minnesota in ‘25 and ‘26

After spending its inaugural years in Gering, Nebraska, the U.S. Gravel National Championships will move north to La Crescent, Minnesota, in 2025 and 2026. 

La Crescent is a small town in the southeast corner of Minnesota, right on the border of the La Crosse region of Wisconsin. It has just about 5,000 residents—3,000 fewer than Gering.

The Minnesota town, which is known as the Apple Capital of Minnesota, will host the weekend-long championship in the third weekend of September 2025, which coincides with La Crescent’s annual Apple Festival. 

In fact, A.J. Friels, Explore La Crosse’s executive director, calls the region a “cyclist’s dream.”

“We call it the Driftless Region, where the Ice Age glaciers failed to grind down a corrugated, primal landscape,” Friels said. “This untouched playground of bluffs, ridges, coulees, and valleys on both sides of the Mississippi River is crisscrossed by two networks: smooth, low-traffic county byways and rolling gravel backroads is a cyclist’s dream.”

Historically, the top three finishers in the men’s and women’s elite categories at the national event will automatically qualify for the 2025 UCI Gravel World Championships, which will be held in Nice, France. Those six finishers will also be given full support from USA Cycling.

USA Cycling has not yet shared details about the elite prize purse offered at 2025 Gravel Nationals. In 2023, a $60,000 prize purse was split equally among the top elite men and women, and this year, a $40,000 prize purse will be distributed at Nationals in the same manner. 

Last year, Keegan Swenson (Santa Cruz Bicycles/SRAM) and Lauren Stephens (then of EF-Education Tibco-SVB, now of Cynisca Cycling) won the first-ever gravel national titles and then went on to compete at the UCI World Gravel Championships.

Age group winners will also earn spots in the World Championships, but without support from USA Cycling.