"One More Year, One Last Dance": Bauke Mollema Confirms 2026 Will Be His Final Season After Twenty Years in the Pro Peloton
Bauke Mollema has confirmed that 2026 will be his final season as a professional road cyclist, bringing the curtain down on one of the most consistent and quietly durable careers the Dutch peloton has produced in a generation. The 39-year-old Lidl-Trek veteran made the announcement on his personal social channels on Tuesday evening, framing his final year with the team as "one last dance" — and confirming that, if his legs allow it, he would like to finish his career at Il Lombardia in October, the race of his life and the only Monument that has ever fallen to him.
"Time flies when you're having fun," Mollema wrote. "From the local NWVG Cycling to Rabobank-Belkin to Lidl-Trek, I'm very grateful to have lived my dream for twenty years. Now it's time to start my final season as a professional rider. One more year, one last dance." Reached by phone at the team's Tenerife training base the next morning, he elaborated only briefly. "It is a feeling that has been building all winter. I still love the racing, I still love the training, but the body tells you. I wanted to be the one to choose the moment. I get to choose the moment. That is a very lucky thing."
Mollema turns 40 in November, and will have ridden for exactly two teams in his two decades at the top of the sport — Rabobank and its Blanco, Belkin and Lotto-Jumbo descendants from 2008 to 2014, then the Trek-Segafredo and Lidl-Trek project he has been part of since 2015. There are no mid-career defections, no contract acrimonies, no failed moves to chase a better deal. In an era defined by constant churn, Mollema's stability is almost old-fashioned. He never had more than two team buses stuck in his memory. "Only two liveries on the wall in my garage," he said. "Not many riders of my generation can say that."
The career numbers are modest by the standards of the sport's current alien generation but deeply respectable in context. Eighteen professional victories. Two Tour de France stages — Alet-les-Bains in 2017, Quillan in 2021, both solo from the breakaway, both classic Mollema raids that crystallised the way he would be remembered. A stage of the Vuelta a España in 2013. A sixth place overall at the 2013 Tour de France. The Clasica San Sebastian in 2016. A silver medal at the 2020 European Championships road race behind Giacomo Nizzolo. And above all — the monument. On a day of thick autumn rain at the 2019 Il Lombardia, Mollema attacked alone on the Civiglio with 18 kilometres to race and rode clear of Alejandro Valverde and a stacked chase group, soloing to the line in Como for the biggest win of his career and the first Dutch victory in the Race of the Falling Leaves for twelve years.
That Lombardia win is the one he wants to go back to. Asked where he hopes to finish the career, Mollema barely hesitated. "I hope Il Lombardia. That seems like a nice farewell. It has been the best single day of my life on a bike. I would like the last one to be on the same roads as the best one." Lidl-Trek team manager Luca Guercilena, asked by telephone on Wednesday morning whether he could confirm that as Mollema's final race, would only smile. "Bauke has earned the right to choose. If his body allows him to be on the start line at Lombardia in October, then that is where we will be. He is a legend of this team. He was a legend of this team before it was called Lidl-Trek."
In the shorter term, Mollema's 2026 calendar is already mostly raced. He opened his season at the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana in early February, then rode Ruta del Sol, Paris-Nice, Volta a Catalunya and the Tour of Flanders, where he finished deep in the Lidl-Trek protection role around Mads Pedersen. Still to come are his beloved Amstel Gold Race, where he has been on the podium twice, then the Ardennes week, Tour de France support duty around team leader Mads Pedersen, the Clasica San Sebastian he won in 2016, and an autumn Italian block built around the Giro dell'Emilia, the Tre Valli Varesine and Lombardia itself. "The programme has not changed because of the announcement," Guercilena stressed. "The programme was always this. Bauke's job has always been to be the rider the younger ones want to be next to in the peloton. That does not change for another six months."
What the announcement does change is the emotional register around every remaining race. Mollema has been in the peloton for so long that half the current WorldTour field has never known a season without him. Pedersen, who has spent the last six years calling him "the quietest legend in the team," offered a short note on Wednesday morning: "Bauke is family. Thank you for everything. One more dance." Tom Dumoulin, Mollema's compatriot and former Movistar teammate at the 2020 Tour de France, simply posted a photograph of the two of them on the podium at the 2011 Vuelta. "The best man in the peloton. Enjoy the last one."
Mollema himself remains — as he has been for twenty years — unflustered. "I will keep racing until the last day and then I will stop," he said. "My family knows. The team knows. Now everybody knows. Ask me again about the emotion in October. Today I have a bike ride to do on Teide." With that he hung up the phone. Somewhere on the island, a 39-year-old Dutchman with eighteen professional wins, one Monument and a quiet reputation as the most trusted domestique in the WorldTour rode out for another eight hours of training on a road he has known for a decade. The emotion, he says, can wait until October.