French WorldTour team to fold, according to reports

French men's WorldTour team and women's ProTeam Arkéa-B&B Hotels is to fold, it was reported on Wednesday morning.

French sports newspaper L'Équipe reported that the team's manager, Emmanuel Hubert, told riders and staff on Wednesday via message that he had been unable to find sponsors for 2026 and onwards, and therefore the team would come to an end.

The deadline for registering a team for next season was 15 October, according to UCI rules, hence the decision to tell the team the news now.

The closure of the team was rumoured for months, with both Arkéa and B&B Hotels stopping their sponsorship at the end of the season.

According to L'Équipe, Arkéa-B&B Hotels counts 150 staff members, including 27 male and 13 female riders.

The riders and staff had been free to find new teams for months, with the move of Kévin Vauquelin to Ineos Grenadiers announced last week.

The men's WorldTour team has existed in various forms since 2005, racing the Tour de France every season since 2014; it became a WorldTour team in 2023. This season, Vaquelin finished seventh overall at the Tour, the team's highest ever result. The women's ProTeam has existed since 2020, rising to this level this year. They have raced every edition of the the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift.

Earlier this month, Hubert told Ouest-France: "The UCI's first deadline is the bank guarantees, which must be provided by October 2, and I haven't met this condition.

"So I can't say it's over, but it's almost over. Now we're looking at October 15th, the final date for submitting our application."

"What upsets me the most is [what this means] on a social level," he continued. "You live more with your employees than with your own family. You live through real human dramas too - one day, in the back of a team track, I witnessed how a mechanic found out that his son had died. And all of that will end.

"I must have spent 25 nights [a year] at home, because I was chasing down every chance there was [for the team to continue]. If they asked me to go to Bruges, I went to Bruges; if they asked me to go to Berlin, I'd go to Berlin."

WorldTour licences for 2026-2028 are set to be renewed at the end of the season, with a space certainly up for grabs with the absence of Arkéa.

More to follow...