“Paul Carries The Sprint Brief, Yves Carries The Closing Cobbled Days, And This Is The First Tour De France Roster The Wolfpack Have Built Without A Protected GC Card Since The 2022 Post-Evenepoel Brief” — Soudal Quick-Step Confirm Full 2026 Tour De France Eight-Rider Squad
Wednesday late evening Wevelgem. Fifty-nine days from the 4 July Lille Grande Départ of the 113th edition of the Tour de France, Soudal Quick-Step have closed their eight-rider 2026 Tour de France squad on the most explicit sprint-and-classics brief the Wolfpack have ever taken to the Grande Boucle. The squad, confirmed at a 21:30 closed-team Wevelgem service-course briefing, reads Paul Magnier, Yves Lampaert, Mauri Vansevenant, Mattia Cattaneo, Casper Pedersen, Gianni Moscon, Luke Lamperti and Ilan Van Wilder.
The brief is the first explicit non-GC roster Soudal Quick-Step have committed to a Tour de France since 2014, and the first since the post-Evenepoel Wolfpack rebuild was formalised at the team's Tervuren strategy block last November. Magnier, the 22-year-old French sprinter who closed his spring on five Tirreno-Adriatico podiums and a Brabantse Pijl reduced-bunch second-place behind Wellens, holds a 12/1 outright on the maillot vert and a 7/2 on the points classification's best young rider's line. Magnier opens the closing pre-Tour build at the rebranded Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes from 7 to 14 June, where he is the second-favourite green-jersey card behind Girmay on the four credible sprint days.
Lampaert, the 35-year-old Belgian classics specialist whose closing-fortnight 2026 form-line ran a Roubaix top-twelve and a Brabantse Pijl podium, holds a 33/1 outright on a closing-week breakaway scenario and is the principal Wolfpack road-captain on the closing cobbled fortnight that opens with the Stage 4 Compiègne-Château-Thierry roll-out and runs through to the Stage 6 Reims-Dijon transition. Soudal Quick-Step's internal expected-value model puts the squad at 18% on a Magnier individual stage win and 12% on a Lampaert breakaway day, the highest non-GC stage-win line the team has carried into a Grande Boucle since the 2018 Sagan-Gaviria-rivalry edition.
Cattaneo, the 35-year-old Italian climber, takes the GC road-captain rotation in a Magnier-support role across the closing nine flat-to-rolling stages, with no protected card declared and the team's best GC line priced at 80/1 outright. The decision to drop a protected GC brief is the most significant shift in the Soudal Quick-Step racing programme since the 2024 split with Evenepoel, and the brief explicitly trades a top-twenty GC ambition for a sprint-and-stage line-up that delivers ten priced sprint-or-breakaway days across the 21-stage route.
Vansevenant, the 25-year-old Belgian climber whose Itzulia top-eight pulled him through the closing-form pivot two weeks ago, is the principal Magnier mountain domestique through the Pyrénées and the Massif Central. Pedersen, who closed Romandie 11th overall on a 0:54 deficit to Pogačar, takes the closing-week rotation as Magnier's lead-out launcher into Paris. Lamperti, the 24-year-old American stagiaire who steps up to the WorldTour squad on his Tour debut, takes the closing-fortnight finishing-circle role on the seven priced sprint days.
The squad's eight-rider list closes the second-longest-running open Tour line-up question on the 2026 cycling calendar, behind only the UAE Team Emirates-XRG Vermeersch confirmation that closed on Tuesday evening. Soudal Quick-Step DS Steven De Jongh briefed the closed-team meeting on a sprint-only brief at the Wevelgem service course, with the closing-week public confirmation rolled into the team's 22:00 Thursday-morning press release window.
Magnier opens the closing pre-Tour build at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes from 7 to 14 June, with the Belgian national championships at Heers-Borgloon on 21 June and the Belgian time trial championships at Hesbaye on 18 June the closing pre-Lille public form-pivots. Lampaert opens his closing pre-Tour block at the Belgian time trial championships and rolls into a closed-team Wevelgem altitude rotation through the closing fortnight before the 4 July Lille Grande Départ. The closing public form-pivot is now the 14 June Combloux summit at the rebranded Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, the same closing-form pivot the post-Romandie market has settled on for the rest of the Tour de France protected-GC field.