UAE Team Emirates-XRG Confirm Giro d'Italia 2026 Squad Around João Almeida: A GC-First Unit Built To Chase The Maglia Rosa From Bulgaria
UAE Team Emirates-XRG became the final WorldTour outfit to confirm their eight-rider Giro d'Italia 2026 squad on Thursday, releasing a 14:00 CET squad sheet from Abu Dhabi that formally locks João Almeida into the leader's role for the Bulgaria Grande Partenza on 8 May. It is the deepest GC-first unit the Emirati squad has ever sent to the Corsa Rosa and, with twenty-nine days between the press release and the stage 1 départ in Burgas, it arrives unusually early by the team's standards.
Almeida, who finished second behind Primož Roglič at the 2025 Giro and has finished on the podium of the Italian Grand Tour in each of the last two seasons, will be flanked by Adam Yates, Jay Vine, Pavel Sivakov, Brandon McNulty, Rafał Majka, Marc Soler and 22-year-old Spanish climber Igor Arrieta, handed his first three-week start. The most striking structural detail of the selection is the absence of a single dedicated sprinter — the squad is built around eight climbers, a time-trial workhorse and a road captain, and head sports director Matxin Joxean Fernández confirmed on the call that "the Giro for us is not a stage-hunting race this year. It is a race for the maglia rosa from kilometre zero."
Almeida's own selection was never in doubt but the inclusion of Yates, who joined UAE specifically to ride for Tadej Pogačar at the Tour de France, is the sheet's first headline. "Adam has said for eighteen months that he wants to ride the Giro as a road captain," Matxin told the Thursday conference call. "The shape he is in right now makes that decision easy. He will work for João in Bulgaria, he will work for João in the Dolomites, and he will be on the start line of the Tour de France twenty-eight days after the Giro finishes." Yates finished fourth at the 2023 Tour behind Jonas Vingegaard and will, in the Giro, serve exclusively as Almeida's senior mountain lieutenant — the same role Adam Yates played for Pogačar on the final Tour de France climb of 2024.
Jay Vine's inclusion is equally pointed. The 30-year-old Australian recovered through the winter from the cervical fracture sustained in his Volta a Catalunya crash twelve months ago, rode the Volta ao Algarve in February and built steadily through Tirreno-Adriatico and the Vuelta al País Vasco. Matxin described him as "the rider who will ride the queen stage in the Dolomites on stage 19 at the front of the group with João" and confirmed Vine's workload will be front-loaded into the final week. Vine himself spoke only briefly from the team's Alicante altitude camp: "I came back for stages like the Tonale and the Marmolada. I did not come back for any other reason."
Sivakov, McNulty and Majka round out a GC-focused support unit that will also contribute time-trial horsepower across the route's 61km of chrono kilometres split between stage 10 (34km TT in Siena) and stage 14 (27km hilly TT to San Candido). Almeida is the team's strongest pure chrono rider and Matxin was explicit on the structure of the selection: "We have built this team around the two time trials. João will take time on Jonas Vingegaard in both stages. Everything we do between Bulgaria and Siena is about getting João to the first time trial in pink." It is the most direct public statement of GC intent UAE have ever made about a Vingegaard-led Giro.
The most emotional inclusion is 22-year-old Igor Arrieta, the Spanish neo-pro given the final slot on the squad after two strong recent performances at Itzulia Basque Country — a long breakaway on stage 3 and a supporting role in UAE's stage 4 queen stage defence. "Igor asked for this selection," Matxin said. "He told me after stage 3 that he wanted to ride his first Grand Tour at home. This is not a rider we are protecting — this is a rider we trust to ride stage 17 in the Dolomites with João." Arrieta's selection also forces out Marc Hirschi, who will instead concentrate fully on the Ardennes classics alongside Pogačar at Amstel Gold Race, Flèche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège.
Marc Soler is the de facto road captain and will ride his sixth consecutive Giro d'Italia, a longer unbroken Giro run than any other current WorldTour rider. The Catalan is entering the second year of a two-year extension that runs through the end of 2026 and Matxin confirmed on Thursday that a further twelve-month extension is "in the final drafting phase" and will be announced in early May. Soler is the only rider on the squad to have previously ridden with Almeida at both Movistar and UAE and has been described by the Portuguese leader as "the road captain I have been waiting for since I turned professional".
The 2026 Giro d'Italia begins in Burgas on 8 May with the Bulgaria Grande Partenza — three stages on the Black Sea coast before a rest-day transfer to Bari — and ends in Rome on 31 May after 3,460km, 57,100m of climbing and a final-week Dolomite block that our route preview called "the hardest third week any Giro has produced since 2017". UAE's Thursday confirmation is the last major GC squad announcement before Team Visma-Lease a Bike's Monday release and, together with the existing Visma lineup confirmation, completes the top half of the Giro d'Italia start list four weeks from the Bulgarian départ.