Brabantse Pijl 2026 Startlists Confirmed: Remco Evenepoel Leads Men's Ardennes Opener In First Race Since Flanders Podium, Demi Vollering Headlines Women's Field For Overijse Double-Header
The organisers of the De Brabantse Pijl confirmed the final provisional startlists for the men's and women's 2026 editions on Thursday afternoon. The headline is the one Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe had been holding back for the last seven days: Remco Evenepoel is confirmed on the line in Leuven on Wednesday 15 April for his first race since his stunning debut podium at the Tour of Flanders. Evenepoel leads an eight-rider Red Bull men's selection that includes Louis Vervaeke in the road captain role and confirms what had been an open secret in Belgian cycling journalism all week: the Brabantse Pijl is now the opening stage of Evenepoel's 2026 Ardennes campaign.
It is the race's most prestigious men's headliner in nearly a decade. The Brabantse Pijl — short, brutal and notoriously difficult to control on its eleven categorised climbs including four ascents of the Alsemberg and three of the Schavei — has long been a dress rehearsal for the Ardennes favourites, but it has also historically been a race that the very biggest Monument names skip in favour of a mid-April rest week. Evenepoel's decision to race Brabantse Pijl, combined with his well-documented deliberate skipping of Paris-Roubaix, reshapes the Ardennes form guide four days before Amstel Gold.
The Belgian will not be the only marquee name in Leuven. Alongside Evenepoel, the men's provisional startlist is the deepest Brabantse Pijl peloton since 2018. Maxim Van Gils and Mattias Skjelmose both race for Lidl-Trek after passing on the closing stage of the Itzulia. Decathlon-AG2R name Felix Gall and an attacking-free-role selection for Aurélien Paret-Peintre. Tom Pidcock's name is conspicuously absent from the Pinarello-Q36.5 sheet — a confirmation of the knee ligament injury timeline that has put even Flèche Wallonne in doubt — with Jake Stewart and Damiano Caruso instead leading the Italian team's Overijse debut.
There is one significant absentee. Tadej Pogačar, who won Brabantse Pijl in 2022 on one of the most audacious long-range attacks the race has ever witnessed, will skip the 2026 edition entirely. The UAE Team Emirates-XRG leader's Ardennes campaign, already reshuffled by the Itzulia abandon of Isaac del Toro, will now officially begin at Amstel Gold on 19 April. Matxin Joxean Fernández, speaking briefly to Belgian reporters on the Lille Velodrome concourse on Thursday evening after the Paris-Roubaix safety briefing, said: "We have spoken about this all winter. Brabantse Pijl is now a rider's choice, not a team instruction. Tadej has chosen a long weekend and a full week of Ardennes recon instead."
The women's race is arguably the stronger field of the two. Demi Vollering is confirmed on the new FDJ-SUEZ squad, making her first race appearance since her fifth-place Flanders return on 5 April, and the former world number one will be joined in Leuven by Puck Pieterse, Elisa Longo Borghini (in her first race back since the Tour of Flanders concussion), and a SD Worx-Protime selection that will be formally announced on Saturday morning after the Paris-Roubaix Femmes finish in Roubaix. Longo Borghini's inclusion on the Lidl-Trek startlist — provisionally — is the cleanest evidence yet of the Italian's now-confirmed concussion clearance and the return of the defending Paris-Roubaix Femmes champion to the peloton.
Absent from the women's sheet is Lotte Kopecky, whose team has chosen to rest the SD Worx-Protime leader for three full days after the Paris-Roubaix Femmes finale on Saturday before reintegrating her at Amstel Gold Ladies on 19 April. Marianne Vos will also skip the race for the same reason. Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, the defending Paris-Roubaix Femmes champion on the Visma-Lease a Bike women's squad, is expected on the startlist but has not yet been confirmed.
For the race itself, the 2026 edition of Brabantse Pijl repeats the 205.1-kilometre course that the race has used since 2023, running from Leuven through the Hageland and the Brabantse Wouden before the four-lap finishing circuit around Overijse. The women's race, which runs earlier in the day on the same 133-kilometre short-course version, is in its third year as part of the UCI Women's WorldTour. Last year's men's winner, Alex Aranburu, races for Tudor Pro Cycling on the back of the team's historic Paris-Roubaix debut the weekend before, and will start as a marked man rather than the favourite he was in 2025.
The Brabantse Pijl has, in recent years, become a useful proxy for the state of the Ardennes form table going into Amstel. With Evenepoel in and Pogačar out, with Vollering, Pieterse and Longo Borghini headlining an open women's race, and with a Roglič-free men's peloton the biggest Ardennes-relevant field the race has seen since 2022, Wednesday's Overijse double-header is the first definitive glimpse of an Ardennes campaign that — between the Seixas of this Itzulia and the Evenepoel of this Flanders — may well end up being the most competitive the Belgian Ardennes has seen in a decade.