Is there a finer balancing act in cycling than planning the schedules of the stars at UAE Team Emirates-XRG? This is a team of so many big named riders, bursting with so much talent, and with so much ambition, that it feels almost impossible to manage. How can you ensure enough leadership opportunities to keep everyone happy?

Last weekend, the broad plan for the major races of 2026 was confirmed. As usual, Tadej Pogačar will lead the line at the Tour de France, while also prioritising all of the Monument classics during the spring. At the Giro d’Italia, rather than have another go at chasing the Maglia Rosa he came so close to winning last year, Isaac del Toro will make his Tour debut, reverting to a support role for Pogačar.

In his absence, João Almeida will take over the reins at the Giro, where he will be supported by the likes of Adam Yates and Jay Vine, and Almeida is also down to ride the Vuelta a España, where he may or may not be joined by Pogačar, depending on the Slovenian’s appetite and shape that deep into the season.

When Pogačar takes part in a race, there’s no questioning the internal hierarchy at UAE Team Emirates-XRG. He’s simply too good, to the point where nobody expects to be prioritised ahead of him. In any case, he’s also very well-liked within the team; you never get the sense that anyone is riding for him begrudgingly. The problems arise when Pogačar isn’t present — as we witnessed last year at the Grand Tours, where things got messy.

First came the Giro d’Italia, when Juan Ayuso’s status as leader was threatened when Del Toro attacked to take the pink jersey at the end of the first week. Ultimately the team didn’t have to make any difficult decisions when Ayuso tumbled out of GC contention feeling the effects of a knee injury, but tensions were bubbling. Then at the Vuelta a España, chaos ensued.

Here, there wasn’t even the pretence of a united front, with the likes of Ayuso, Vine and Marc Soler all firing up the road in search of stage wins, rather than aid their GC leader João Almeida. On one hand the race could be considered a great success, with the team’s relentless attacking and prioritising individual racing helping them to a huge haul of seven stage wins. But they didn’t win the overall classification, with Almeida falling 76 seconds short of Jonas Vingegaard. We’ll never know whether or not a more united front would have been enough to make up that time and take the red jersey.

In a year of unprecedented success for the team, which saw them approach a century of wins and break the record for the most in a single season, these failures to win the Giro and Vuelta were rare blights. It also points to how and where they might build upon that extraordinary season, and find room for improvement.

This is a team with the potential to win all three Grand Tours in a single season, and the fact their arch-rivals did just that in 2023 might spur them to want to do the same. One major change for the 2026 season is that Juan Ayuso has departed, leaving the team for Lidl-Trek. It was a turbulent year for the Spaniard, and tensions between himself and the rest of the team playing out in a painfully public manner, generating many unwanted headlines.

As a top talent with high ambitions of his own, but often obliged either to share or cede leadership to others, he epitomised the problems with team’s star-heavy squad, and by the time all hell broke loose at the Vuelta (during which Ayuso likened the team to a dictatorship) it was clear that he had no future at the team. But his departure alone might not be enough to curb tensions and potential fallouts.

The biggest victim in the in-fighting was arguably João Almeida, and as if to make up for the lack of support he received last year, the team have promoted him to more superior roles. The Portuguese has been relieved of domestique duties at the Tour de France, and instead has been designated the GC leader for the Giro d’Italia, and possibly at the Vuelta a España. 2025 was a stellar season for Almeida, in which he won each of Itzulia Basque Country, Tour de Romandie and Tour de Suisse back-to-back, before his impressive runner-up finish despite a lack of support. He’s the best GC rider in the peloton yet to have won a Grand Tour, and it will be his primary aim in 2026 to put that right. For him to have the best opportunity of doing so, he’ll need the team to rally behind him; but looking at the provisional Giro line-up, you still sense there’s the potential for friction.

Adam Yates is down to ride, and though he has mostly been content to ride in supporting-role since signing for the team in 2023, mostly in service of Pogačar, could he harbour his own personal ambitions? Set to turn 34 in the summer, he’s running out of time to win what would be a first ever Grand Tour title, something that remains the most glaring omission on his palmares. Having watched his twin brother Simon win the pink jersey last year, he might have developed a taste for it himself.

Alongside him, another rider on the Giro startlist is Jay Vine, who was one of those who chased and won stages at the Vuelta last year at the expense of Almeida’s red jersey bid. Will he be happy to curb those instincts this time around? And though the rest of the line-up will be made up mostly of promising young talent such as Jan Christen, we saw from Del Toro’s emergence last year how a breakthrough ride from one such talent has the potential to complicate matters.

There’s no doubting the strength of UAE Team Emirates-XRG’s roster once again this year, and, on paper at least, they could go into all three Grand Tours as the favourite for the overall title. But the question remains of whether or not they can transcend the problems of last year and become more of a collective, either allowing internal rivalry to again compromise some of their biggest targets, or cohere into something even more successful.