Amstel Gold Race 2026 Men's Startlist Confirmed: Pogačar Heads A Field Now Defined By Del Toro's Absence
Amstel Gold Race organiser Leo van Vliet confirmed the provisional men's startlist for the 60th edition of the Amstel Gold Race on Thursday afternoon, ten days out from the 19 April start in Maastricht. The confirmation lands on the same day as UAE Team Emirates-XRG's 11:40 Abu Dhabi medical bulletin ruling Isaac del Toro out of the entire Ardennes campaign with a grade-two rectus femoris tear — and the ripple has redrawn the leader board before a single wheel has rolled on the Cauberg.
Tadej Pogačar is formally listed as UAE's leader for all three Ardennes classics, a line in van Vliet's Thursday release that until this morning read "leader subject to Del Toro confirmation". The Slovenian world champion, last a starter at Amstel Gold in 2024 when he soloed to victory from the Cauberg, will now lead a reshaped UAE unit of Adam Yates, Juan Ayuso, Marc Hirschi, Brandon McNulty, Rafał Majka, Igor Arrieta and Pavel Sivakov — the deepest Ardennes squad UAE have ever assembled and, crucially, one built when Pogačar was supposed to be using the week as a rest block.
"The team that was built for Isaac is the team that races for Tadej," UAE sporting manager Joxean Fernández Matxin told a 16:00 Thursday conference call. "We do not change any rider. We change the objective. Tadej has asked us to ride Amstel Gold the same way we rode it in 2024 — from the Bemelerberg with six kilometres to race, not from the Cauberg with forty." Matxin confirmed the Slovenian will also start Flèche Wallonne on 22 April and Liège-Bastogne-Liège on 26 April, making 2026 the first time Pogačar races a full Ardennes trilogy since 2021.
Remco Evenepoel heads Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe's seven-rider line-up, with the Belgian making his post-Flanders return at Brabantse Pijl on 15 April and then launching his main Ardennes block at Amstel four days later. Primož Roglič, who will finish the Itzulia Basque Country on Saturday in second overall and the team's declared Ardennes bridgehead, is also named alongside Aleksandr Vlasov, Max Schachmann, Giovanni Aleotti, Emanuel Buchmann and Pello Bilbao. For Roglič the entire seven-day Itzulia has been a single long Amstel Gold taper and head sports director Rolf Aldag confirmed Thursday that "no other number on Primož's calendar in April matters".
The most emotional inclusion on van Vliet's list is Mikel Landa, officially named as Soudal-QuickStep's leader hours after his Thursday evening follow-up MRI at Policlínica Gipuzkoa came back completely clean. The Basque climber crashed heavily on the San Miguel de Aralar descent of Itzulia stage 2 and was a serious Ardennes doubt for seventy-two hours. Team doctor Yvan Vanmol's 21:18 medical bulletin released "nothing that concerns us" onto the wire and Landa was added to Amstel within the hour. Ilan Van Wilder, Julian Alaphilippe, Valentin Paret-Peintre, Josef Černý and Louis Vervaeke complete the Wolfpack seven.
A host of third-tier GC men give the 2026 field genuine depth. Tom Pidcock's start remains subject to a final Sunday knee assessment after the Volta a Catalunya crash — Pinarello-Q36.5 team doctor Phil Riley has set an 11 April deadline for a go/no-go call — and Matteo Jorgenson is named as Visma-Lease a Bike's sole leader after Wout van Aert confirmed on Tuesday that he will skip the entire Ardennes block. Ineos Grenadiers line up around a refreshed British-Colombian core of Ben Turner, Michał Kwiatkowski, Carlos Rodríguez, Magnus Sheffield, Tobias Foss and 22-year-old Colombian climber Rafael Pineda, who impressed at Itzulia in the 2026 season's best neo-pro performance this spring.
Race director van Vliet also confirmed two route tweaks for 2026: the Bergseweg has been dropped from the third Cauberg loop in favour of a tightened Fromberg-Keutenberg couplet, and the final Cauberg has moved 200 metres closer to the finish line — a change van Vliet openly called "an attempt to bring the decision back onto the climb that made this race" after the last two editions were decided in reduced-bunch sprints on the run-in. "The 2025 race was the first since 2017 not decided on the Cauberg. We would prefer it to be decided there again."
The 2026 men's Amstel Gold Race will be held over 256.5km and 35 climbs, departing Maastricht at 10:15 on Sunday 19 April and finishing on the Berg en Terblijt long drag with the final Cauberg summit 5.8km from the line. With Pogačar now leading all three Ardennes one-day races and Evenepoel returning from his Tour of Flanders podium, the race has taken on the character of a straight head-to-head between the Slovenian and the Belgian — the first time an Ardennes opener has carried that weight since Philippe Gilbert and Joaquim Rodríguez raced for yellow over the Cauberg in 2011.