Continental Series will include 28 races worldwide in 2025, with overall winners in XC and DH eligable to race the World Cup
The UCI has launched a new 28-strong global race series for 2025, with race winners eligible to compete in the World Cup the following year. Called the Continental Series, the top five overall winners across downhill and cross country will qualify to race the entire World Cup series the following year; while a podium top step guarantees one World Cup round entry.
Besides working as a feeder series for the World Cups, the new Continental Series includes already established and successful races in their own right, including the New Zealand National Mountain Nike Series and Crankworx. There are 28 separate XC and downhill races across America, Europe and Oceania that will be drawn into the new Continental Series.
The Americas will host 12 Continental Series events (seven XC and five DH races), and including events like the Monster Energy Pro Downhill Series at Rock Creek, North Caroline. Europe will have nine events (four XC, four DH, and one combining both formats), and Oceania seven events (two XC, four DH, and one combined event). There’s no mention of Red Bull Hardline as a qualifying event for the World Cup as it’s not a UCI-ratified event.
The UCI has drawn criticism in the past few years for making the World Cups more exclusive, limiting the number of riders and teams at each venue, and potentially making it harder for young riders to break through.
In the 2025 the number of junior men racing Finals has been cut to 20 from 25, while just 10 junior women get to race. There are also only 40 UCI Mountain Bike World Series Teams allowed in the top tier of racing, split equally between gravity and endurance or cross country disciplines.
The UCI sees the new Continental series “part of the key developments” for mountain biking, to “ensure the continued development of the discipline.” In other words, prevent the pool of new talent from drying up and channel in a stream of new riders. The key developments saw changes including letting individuals and not just teams enter riders for World Cup races, as well as the addition of eight additional wildcard teams, while National Federations will retain their designated quota.
The UCI says the new Continental Series will award points to mountain bikers much like the Hors Classe (HC) do for road riders. “This will provide riders around the world with another chance to earn valuable points for the UCI Individual Ranking,” it says.