It's been three weeks now already since the venues for the 2027 UCI Super World Championships were officially announced.

In this article, you'll find all the details about these venues, but we've also decided to take a closer look at how these UCI Super World Championships are being organized in Haute-Savoie. Michel Callot, President of the French Cycling Federation (FFC) and of the Organizing Committee for these championships, and Florian Vuillaume, Director of the Organizing Committee, give us the details!

Locations of the 2027 UCI Super World Championships

UCI Super World Championships ?

"Super World Championships, what's that?", I hear you say! Well, in 2023, the UCI has decided not to organize a road World Championship every 4 years (as in other years) but UCI Super World Championships, combining the World Championships of several cycling disciplines into a single event. In 2023, this event took place for the first time, in Glasgow and elsewhere in Scotland, bringing together 13 World Championships in the space of 11 days (road, para-cycling road, track, para-cycling track, MTB cross-country, MTB downhill, MTB marathon, BMX racing, BMX freestyle park, BMX freestyle flatland, trials, indoor cycling and gran fondo).

In 2027, it will be the turn of France, and more specifically Haute-Savoie, to host these UCI Super World Championships, and for its second edition, the event will be even bigger than in 2023. No fewer than 20 World Championships are scheduled for the event, with the addition of the MTB Enduro, Pump Track, e-sport, gravel, indoor speedway, polo-bike and junior track World Championships (which will complement the existing track World Championships in the Super World Championships). For indoor speedway cycling and polo-biking, this will be the very first edition of their World Championships to be held in history, and thus as part of the Super World Championships.

The 2027 UCI Super World Championships in figuresThe 2027 UCI Super World Championships in Haute-Savoie will feature 20 disciplines, bringing together no fewer than 10,000 athletes (elite and amateur) representing over 130 nations. The event will take place over 13 days - from August 24 to September 5, 2027 - with no fewer than 281 UCI world titles at stake!

That's around 60 more titles for 3,000 more athletes than in Glasgow 2023, and 2 million spectators, 700 accredited media representatives and 4,000 volunteers are expected to make it all possible. From a distance, the cumulative TV audience is expected to reach one billion viewers for this event, which is akin to the Olympic Games of cycling (although of course we're not allowed to call it that!).

World Championships location, discipline by discipline

The Haute-Savoie department will be hosting the 2027 UCI Super World Championships, and the entire department will be in the spotlight, with, as for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, a breathtaking choice of scenery, here combining mountains and lakes...

The headquarters of the UCI and the organizing committee for these 2027 UCI World Championships will be the Rochexpo site in La Roche-sur-Foron, where the indoor cycling, indoor speedway cycling and polo-bike events will also take place. Here is the full list of venues:

• Annecy: BMX Racing & Road Time Trial (Lac d'Annecy)
• Thônes & La Clusaz: Gran Fondo
• Cluses: BMX Freestyle Park & BMX Freestyle Flatland
• Sallanches Domancy: Road Road Race & Trials
• Grand Massif: MTB Marathon & MTB Enduro
• Les Gets: Downhill MTB & Cross-Country MTB
• Châtel: Gravel
• Saint-Pierre-en-Faucigny: Pump Track
• Évian-les-Bains: E-Sport Cycling
  
  Commenting on the site, Michel Callot said: Thanks to the Haute-Savoie department, we've chosen an extraordinary site, the Coupole in Evian: we're bringing a very modern discipline to a historic site, which is splendid. In terms of image, it'll be a great way to promote e-sport!
• La Roche-sur-Foron: Indoor Cycling, Indoor Speedway Cycling & Polo-Vélo (Rochexpo)
• Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (78): Track, Junior Track & Paracycling Track

The 2027 Road World Championships course at Sallanches Domancy

For the 2027 Road World Championships, a circuit only race route has been chosen, without a preceding road section, and it is a single circuit for all participant categories, with only the number of laps completed varying. This will be a historic circuit, as it will be identical to the one used in 1980 when Bernard Hinault won the Road World Championships (Sallanches also hosted the World Championships in 1964).

The start and finish will be in Sallanches, and a lap will measure 13.3 km, with the main difficulty being the Côte de Domancy (2.5 km at 9.4%, with a maximum gradient of 16%). For the occasion, the road up this climb has been renamed Route Bernard Hinault.

Regarding the choice of circuit, Florian Vuillaume explained thatbeyond the sporting choice of returning to a historic circuit, for us organizers it's also simpler and more reasonable to have a closed circuit where we can welcome spectators in good conditions, and control the flow, because if we want there to be people and mobility we have to identify access poles for spectators, to be able to receive them well, and we're going to create an ephemeral stadium for 8 days

In previous World Championship organization models, there was one finish city and, depending on the event, 3, 4, 5 or 6 starting points. For each starting point this adds additional constraints.

Michel Callot pointed out that that's also part of organizing this event responsibly: we could have crossed the whole department in all directions each time, but we have to manage the flow of spectators, the flow of police, all that sort of things. Apart from the cost, it adds a lot of unnecessary travel. It has an ecological cost too, and I think that in terms of event coherence, it's something that brings nothing: it disperses more than it brings.

Below, you'll find the profile and a detailed map of this UCI 2027 World Championships circuit on OpenStreetMap. Click on images to enlarge.

So, how are the 2027 UCI Super World Championships organized?

In view of the figures given above, you can imagine that we're talking about a huge organization, to prepare everything and make sure that in 2027, during the two weeks of the event, everything runs smoothly.
With Michel Callot, President of the French Cycling Federation (FFC) and President of the Organizing Committee for these championships, and Florian Vuillaume, Director of the Organizing Committee, we had a breakfast to take stock of the organization, which began some time ago and will continue until 2027, and even a little beyond the event itself.

Timeline of the UCI World Championships 2027

Before we go into all this in more detail, let's first take a look at the timeline for the organization of the event:

• 2017-2022
  The bid
  Since 2017, the French Cycling Federation has been working to organize the World Championships. Find out more about the bid below.
• September 2022
  The 2027 UCI Super World Championships awarded to Haute-Savoie
  In September 2022, on the occasion of the 2022 Road World Championships in Wollongong, the UCI Management Committee awarded the 2027 UCI World Championships to Haute-Savoie, the only candidate in the running!
• September 2022-September 2024
  Structuring
  Two years passed between the euphoria of the award and the creation of the organizing committee. But it wasn't all plain sailing: they had to think about how to structure it, with the various stakeholders clarifying their roles, while respecting all the political aspects surrounding such an organization.
• September 16, 2024
  Creation of the Organizing Committee
  The organizing committee, "Vélo au sommet : Championnats du Monde de Cyclisme UCI 2027 Haute-Savoie Mont-Blanc France" was officially registered on this day, and its Director, Florian Vuillaume, began his activities on this occasion.
• September 2024 - April 2025
  The organizing committee is set up and the venues are defined
  Between September 2024 and April 2025, the Organizing Committee set about recruiting a number of profiles to complement Florian's, and began discussions with the Haute-Savoie department to determine the venues for the 2027 UCI World Championships.
• April 15, 2025
  Venue announcement
  That day, it was finally all good: even if the organization would have liked to have done it sooner, the venues for the 2027 UCI World Championships were finally announced and the event began to spread throughout Haute-Savoie, France and, timidly, the rest of the world (this 3-language publication will contribute to this 😀).
• April 2025 - June 2025
  Defining possible partnership packages
  Such an event obviously needs funding. The months of April and May are used to define the various possible partnerships, so that they can be marketed from June onwards, around two years before the event. To find out more, read more about partnerships below 💰
• September 2025
  The identity
  In addition to the poster presented when the veil was lifted on the venues of the 2027 UCI World Championships, work on the identity will lead in September 2025 to the communication assets, such as a graphic charter, a logo and a mascot for example, giving a face to the event, which will be found on site at the various competition venues.
• 2026
  Announcement of event dates
  In 2026, probably in April as was the case this year for the announcement of the venues, the dates of the various events will be announced, which must find their place in a coherent calendar that also serves TV broadcasting.
  One or more events for the general public
  The organizing committee, keen to raise the profile of the event, intends to organize one or more events for the general public, rather like the "Marathon pour tous" at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, but probably as early as 2026, and probably also during the event.
  A legacy program
  With the "Vélo 2027" label, the French Cycling Federation hopes to develop a legacy program from 2026 onwards (and perhaps even timidly from 2025), serving cycling in the broadest sense.
• july - august 2027
  Setting up the event
  The precise period is not yet known, but it's probably in July and August that the event will be set up with its ephemeral structures (site dressing, fencing, arrows, etc.), bearing in mind that by then the construction of the BMX track will also have been constructed in Annecy.
• August 24-September 5, 2027
  The event takes place!
  From August 24 to September 5, 2027, the time has finally come for the event to take place: the 2027 UCI World Championships will award 281 World Champions!
• September 2027 - April 2028
  Dismantling the organization
  After, hopefully, a successful event, it's not a case of snapping your fingers and turning the page. It will take some time for the Organizing Committee's activities to come to a proper close, but it should be in April 2028 that its liquidation can be pronounced, with final checks on its financial standing, having fulfilled all its obligations and promises.

The organization in detail

Let's take a closer look at a few aspects of the organization, with speeches by Michel Callot and Florian Vuillaume. Below, their speeches are indicated as follows:🎙️MC for Michel Callot and🎙️FV for Florian Vuillaume and are shown in italics.Michel Callot (left) and Florian Vuillaume (right) - 📷 © Thomas Vergouwen/velowireVery deliberately, we have transcribed almost everything that was discussed with them. To enable you to read the information directly on the subjects that interest you, you'll find the various topics below:

• The candidacy
• Structuring the organization
• The organizing committee is being set up and is working on defining the venues
• How were the venues chosen?
• Building the BMX racing track
• Financing through partnerships
• Dates and access to events
• What exactly is the Organizing Committee, and how many people are involved?
• The identity of the 2027 UCI World Championships
• From "Vélo au sommet" to the UCI 2027 World Championships Haute-Savoie to "Vélo 2027
• Events for the general public
• The 2027 UCI World Championships, one level below but just as big as the Paris 2024 Olympic Games?

The candidacy

🎙️MC: The French Cycling Federation has been fighting for all the World Championships since 2017. There had been talk of a Road World Championship in Haute-Savoie, which was finally awarded to Imola in Italy (after initially being awarded to Vicenza, Italy, which was ultimately unable to provide the financial guarantees requested, then being awarded to Aigle and Martigny in Switzerland before being cancelled due to measures linked to the Covid19 epidemic). However, following discussions between Martial Saddier, President of the Haute-Savoie Departmental Council, and David Lappartient, President of the International Cycling Union (UCI), a bid for the Super World Championships in 2027 was finally put together!
The State was involved in the bid, in the face of the "gigantism of the project", with an intervention by the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, on video in the bid.The file thus made its way and finally won quite easily, admits Michel Callot, the award with the UCI Management Committee in Australia in September 2022 (on the sidelines of the 2022 World Championships in Wollongong) (Haute-Savoie was the only candidate).

Structuring the organization

Once the event had been awarded, it was obviously necessary to work on setting up the structure of the organization. First of all, they had to 🎙️MC think about how we operate and who organizes it, with several things to bring together: 🎙️MC the UCI, which owns the event, the Departmental Council, which is the main funder and sponsor of the event, and the French Cycling Federation (FFC), which is the delegate. The delegation clearly states that a national or international championship cannot be organized in France without the involvement of the delegate. It was decided that the most reasonable course of action was to set up an organizing committee in the form of an association, Vélo au sommet... which is just a code name. The presidency of the organizing committee is, by its statutes, attributed to the President of the FFC. This allows the sport to remain at the heart of the project, and allows other players to be present on the organizing committee and to pull their weight. Financing means we need to be in perfect harmony with the Haute-Savoie department, and this is the balance that has been struck between the President of the Haute-Savoie Departmental Council, Martial Saddier, and the President of the Organizing Committee, whom I represent on behalf of the FFC. This is vital for the project, all this of course while respecting our control authority which is UCI.

The Organising committee was thus created in September 2024, with official registration on September 16.

Organizing Committee sets up and works on venue definition

Once all these political aspects had been dealt with, and the balance between the various players had been found, 🎙️MC we began to build the Organising committee, with the arrival of Florian Vuillaume as Director of the Organising committee. Florian then began to operate, setting up his team and all the links needed to build the Organising committee, its budget, and so on. A central point was the question of where this super-event was going to be held, and who we were working with in Haute-Savoie in particular. Naturally, this was a departmental prerogative: it was up to Martial Saddier to decide and convince the local authorities, or conversely, to make the choice between those bidding to host the 2027 World Championships. The FFC and the UCI were there as guarantors of whether or not it was technically possible to stage such and such an event in such and such a place. From the outset, President Saddier was determined that the backbone of the event should be the road race in Sallanches, a replica of 1980 which saw the victory of Bernard Hinault, hence his sponsorship. Everything else was open and we went out into the field to set up all the sites. So now we were ready to give the event a real launch with this week's announcement of the dates and sites. For us, it's also the opening of a much more precise worksheet today.

How were the locations chosen?

Michel and Florian responded to the question of who was responsible for choosing the venues for the competitions with a few important details:

🎙️MC: Haute-Savoie has the initiative in choosing the venues, which is logical: we have a political structure, and it's normal that the President of the department (does it), depending on his knowledge, what the various local authorities can do, the balance he wants for his department, the image he wants to convey for the department. After that, there's the technical scrutiny of the Organizing Committee, the FFC and ultimately the UCI. If, for example, the President of the département had said "we want to do downhill mountain biking at the Semnoz", we would have specified that it wasn't possible because there wasn't enough difference in altitude, and not enough ski lifts to cover all the difference in altitude. It was possible in the mountain biking of the 90s, but it's no longer possible today. That's the kind of interaction there can be, but it's really the department that has the upper hand when it comes to distributing events across its territory.

🎙️FV: With Les Gets for example, it's a département that's used to hosting major cycling events on its territory, so it was obvious where to organize which discipline. We're lucky to be in an area that's rich - not only financially, but also in terms of diversity, capacity and infrastructure. We couldn't not organize mountain biking competitions - or at least downhill and enduro competitions - elsewhere than in Les Gets: there's everything you need, they host the World Cup every year (since 2019 and with the exception of 2022, editor's note).

He adds that the Haute-Savoie is 🎙️FV 110% high mountain territory, with a maximum number of people living in the valleys, so we have to think about all that, the challenges of mobility, accessibility and resorts that know how to do it, and we're relying on them. Châtel is another good example. Châtel hosted the Snow Bike World Championships, but they also have a territory that's open to gravel, so we're making the most of what the department has to offer. There are other projects, because as with any major sports project, there's always a notion of legacy (...) President Saddier's wish was also to leave something behind, so that after the World Championships, the county can continue to host major sporting events, and that's why he pushed very hard, and continues to do so, for the construction of the BMX racing track, so that the department can continue to host international events. For Trials it's the same thing: they host the Trials World Cup round every year in Cordon, which is just above Sallanches, and the site is absolutely marvellous, in a cirque facing Mont Blanc. Unfortunately, it's a bit too small to host the World Championships, so we've decided to relocate down to Sallanches, and of course we're going to rely on the local organization teams because they have the know-how. We also want to enable the club to potentially organize a World Cup round in 2025 or 2026, which will serve as a test for us, and then create something that will last a little longer. As President Saddier says, the Haute-Savoie region has 3 dimensions: it's a land of legends, because the World Championships were held here in 1964 and 1980, Les Gets, etc., and it's a land of cycling, because it's a region with a long history and a land of cycling, because on a daily basis it encourages communes to host stages of the Tour de France, the Critérium du Dauphiné, mountain bike World Cup rounds, trials, etc., then land of biking, because the third box is mobility ... for example in Annecy, half the people go to work by bike, the lakeside in summer is saturated with bikes, there are more than 840 kilometers of cycle paths in Haute-Savoie and they continue to accelerate. All the major passes in Haute-Savoie have markers indicating the gradient, and there's an operation called "Haute-Savoie au Sommet" (Haute-Savoie at the Summit) which will be launched again this year in conjunction with our organization, and which closes a pass to traffic every Tuesday during the summer, to enable enthusiasts and sportsmen to climb the pass and come back down in good safety conditions. Cycling is firmly rooted in the region. In the end, the World Championships are a continuation of the work that the department has been carrying out for many years.

Construction of BMX racing track

Overall, the Organizing Committee and the department have identified venues that already have the infrastructure required to host the event, but there will be some new construction, notably of the BMX track in Annecy.

🎙️FV: There will be 3 types of construction:
- construction of permanent facilities by the department with the legacy - BMX in Annecy and Pump track in Saint-Pierre-en-Faucigny
- thanks to the Federation's links and its presence on the National Olympic Committee (NOC), there is a facility inherited from the Olympic Games: the BMX Freestyle track at La Concorde was donated by the Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games (COJO) to the FFC, who in turn donated it to a town in Haute-Savoie, Cluses, and to the Haute-Savoie Departmental Council, so that the equipment could be used for the World Championships, as part of a CSR approach to reuse. So we're going to take the track out again, give it a makeover, check that it conforms to regulations and put it back in place to host the BMX Freestyle events in Cluses; the idea will be to create a sort of stadium around it, which will be able to accommodate 4,000 to 5,000 people
- construction of ephemeral stadiums, either indoors (for events in La Roche-sur-Foron in particular) or outdoors (as for the circuit in Sallanches and on the Côte de Domancy).

As far as the BMX track is concerned, there's really going to be a construction project to do, with all that that means.

🎙️MC: It's a construction project, so we're going through the usual stages with the submission of a building permit and the administrative progress of such a request. These stages are ahead of us, but the political decision has been taken, including by the town of Annecy, which voted for it in its municipal council. So we went as far as we could with President Saddier to get the political decision taken by the city of Annecy, and now we have to follow the administrative processes and the deadlines that go with them. It's a BMX track, not a 40-storey building, so that may limit the number of possible appeals, but we're very attentive to this issue of deadlines.

🎙️FV: It's the department that's behind this project and embodies it. We, along with the Federation and the Organizing Committee, provide the technical expertise, the choice of materials, the size of the track, the need for a changing room underneath, we're going to provide the material for that. After that, it's up to the department to manage the project, select a service provider, clear any appeals and carry out the topographical and soil surveys. The target date is for the track to be ready by early 2027, so that we can organize a competition at that time, because it's important that there should be rolling on a track.

🎙️MC: We saw this at the Paris Olympics, where the track surface, with untested materials, the first rolls on the track were nothing but punctures, whereas normally you never get a puncture in BMX. When we looked at how they did it, we immediately saw that the materials hadn't been tested. These are mistakes we're trying not to make again, and that too is a form of legacy, the legacy of the Olympic Games 2024, where we, the Federation, learned to work with umbrella structures, the Organizing Committee, and try to better interweave our ability to pass on our skills.

Financing through partnerships

Organizing such an event obviously comes at a considerable cost, so it's natural that the Organizing Committee will need private partners to cover part of these costs.

🎙️MC: The organizing budget comes to 43 million euros, excluding investments (BMX racing track and pump track, editor's note). There are 4 pillars to this budget:
- the Haute-Savoie department,
- other local authorities (the towns, which contribute in part by providing services or skills, and there are still discussions underway with the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region),
- the state
- private resources, mainly from marketing (partners) and ancillary revenues (ticketing, merchandising, etc.).

Marketing rights are shared between the UCI (45%) and the local organizing committee (55%). The 55% figure also includes the local authorities, and in particular the Haute-Savoie department, which largely supports the event from a financial point of view, but it's up to us to decide how we work within these 55% and therefore what we market and at what price.

🎙️FV: We're in the process of building and validating the marketing pyramid with the UCI, and we're currently seeing if we can get partners by discipline, as it's complicated to find a multi-discipline partner. We're obviously going to target a banking partner, or a major retail group for example, who will have a voice in all the disciplines. After that, there are some categories that are blocked by the UCI partners, but we have people contacting us saying "we're only interested in mountain biking" or "track" or "BMX". So we're currently working with the Federation and the UCI to open this up, for example to partners who aren't looking for TV visibility but who are interested in being present at events, via entertainment programs or a little visibility of course. We're currently working on it, and it will enable us to refine our marketing pyramid. It will be ready by early June, and then we'll be able to start marketing the packages, hopefully a little more than two years before the event.

Event dates and access

Although the locations of the various events have been announced, we still don't know the program, the schedule of events within the two weeks of the event.

🎙️FV: These will be announced later, in 2026. The complexity is that we have 20 World Championships, and in each World Championship there are several events, 70 to 75 events, 180 jerseys, and we have to fit all that into a 15-day calendar, where we can't have the downhill final and the track final and the women's road events at the same time for example. So we have a TV schedule to build up, and we'll be announcing the details of the event calendar in September 2026, a year before the event, and we'll be launching ticketing at that time.

So access to the road event won't be free?
🎙️FV: Apart from the hospitality services (partly linked to what will be sold in the 55%, editor's note), access will mostly be free, but we could imagine creating country corners at certain points, a France corner, a Denmark corner, a Netherlands corner, where for a small contribution we'd hand out a flag or something, but for the road events, the principle remains free access. In Annecy, the time trial around the lake will be 100% free... Elsewhere, ticketing models have been set up for certain events, such as cyclocross. We haven't yet defined and validated everything, but there will certainly be a large proportion of free events, and we're thinking about models where we can refinance ourselves a little on special programs. We'll look into it.

🎙️MC The spectator experience is also part of the event's success. We can't afford to miss out on that in these Super World Championships. And we know that in the culture of road cycling, if you're going to plant your seat on the Domancy climb, you've got to find a place to do it if you're going to be there at 5am.

And Florian adds 🎙️FV: We're offering people the chance to see the riders 10 times, 12 times, 14 times, 15 times - we'll see how many laps of the circuit there are - but in any case, several times, in stadium conditions, with screens in certain places. So that's what's so interesting about the World Championships circuit model. You get to spend 6 hours watching the bike! Compared to the Tour de France, where you go for the atmosphere, for the "being together", you'll find the added bonus of experiencing the sport all the way through.

What exactly is the Organizing Committee, and how many people are involved?

🎙️FV: We're on a ramp-up: we started the story from scratch when I arrived, now we're 7, we're going to double the number by the end of the year, we'll be 14 and then we'll move forward in a reasoned way. We need to double our workforce by the end of the year, that's a certainty, then we have a roadmap with Michel, we know that we have a potential of employees by 2027, so what's important is that by September we've validated our entire roadmap and our strategy on how we're going to deliver the events. In an organizing committee, one of the biggest items is the payroll, so our challenge with Michel is to make sure that we put the right people in the right places and that they're well occupied, and to see if we're not also in a position to delegate all or part of the intellectual services to third parties to carry out the missions. We know that it takes time to onboard someone, it's 3 months, and we're in a mission model, we're not in an employment model, we can't project people 5 or 10 years ahead: we have a mission, we know that the Committee's lifespan is September 2024 to April 2028, in 3 years time we'll probably be with a liquidator checking that everything's going well. That's how our people take up their jobs: they come to Annecy on a mission to deliver these World Championships. With Michel, we're going to adapt to the needs. For example, for the press conference, we enlisted the help of experts, with the 15Love agency for example, because we know that in our time frame, with subjects that can be hot and need to be dealt with quickly, it's more comfortable for us to be accompanied by experts.
The way we've organized our committee is intimately linked to the state's experience and expertise in delivering the major sporting events of recent years. For example, the choice of legal form to be a for-profit association subject to public procurement is directly in line with what was done for Paris 2024. This makes us extremely attentive to our spending commitments. In fact, together with the DIGES (Délégation interministérielle aux grands événements sportifs - Interministerial Delegation for Major Sports Events), we are under the supervision of an audit and ethics commission which, every two months, oversees our expenditure commitments, our progress, our cash flow, and so on. At government level, there is now real vigilance over what is being done with GESI (big international sporting events).

Identity of the 2027 UCI World Championships

🎙️FV: The role of the Committee will be to bring consistency, to deliver events in the same way. Every time you arrive at one of the competition sites, you'll know that you're at the 2027 UCI World Championships, whether in Saint-Quentin or Sallanches. We're going to bring coherence and structure to the way you're going to experience the event, the way you're going to access it, the way we're going to deliver it, the way it's going to be produced, and the way our partners are going to be involved.

Venue recognition was a hallmark of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, with its purple and pink graphic charter. Beyond the UCI's graphic charter, do you have any freedom in this area?
🎙️FV: We have a 3-year communications plan (...) The founding act that we had, with this press conference, was to say: "Here we are, we're the biggest sporting event between now and 2030, and it's well taken care of by the state, by the department and by the cycling ecosystem, it's us!"
Secondly, what are the Super World Championships, because there isn't just one World Championship, there are 20, and we had to make people understand that... and the driving force behind it all was Sallanches. Now, between now and September, we'll be releasing a charter, a logo and a mascot, because we need strong identities. We'll be travelling with President Callot to Kigali in Rwanda to start lobbying the federations and raising our profile, and then we'll have a really big communications push there, with more to come between now and 2026, when we'll be announcing the disciplines, the calendar and ticketing, and then we'll be in Montreal, normally, where there'll be a passing of the flag from one World Championship to another, and in this case to us, the Super World Championships, and that'll launch a big highlight.

Our communication assets will be on display in September 2025, and then each local authority will speak on its territory: the event will only be a success if everyone takes ownership of it: cycling enthusiasts, local authorities and businesses in the region.

From "Vélo au sommet" to the UCI 2027 World Championships Haute-Savoie to "Vélo 2027"

In 2022, when the bid was launched, it was under the name "Le vélo au sommet 2027". However, this is not a perennial name...

🎙️MC: The name "Le vélo au sommet 2027" was used as part of the bid because we didn't have anything else, but now we're talking about the UCI 2027 Haute-Savoie Mont Blanc World Championships.

From now on 🎙️MC we're going to develop a whole heritage program, and here we're going to shorten it: our heritage label that we're going to use is 'Vélo 2027', because the "vélo" allows us to go beyond cycling, when we go into the fields of mobility, sport and health, and so on. And "2027" because we hope that the notoriety of the event will mean that when we combine "vélo" and "2027", people will have these Super World Championships in mind anyway. The whole label that we're currently discussing with the Agence Nationale du Sport (National Sports Agency, a government organisation), including the conversion of a certain number of programs, for example the "Terre de Jeux" programs, which were used for 2024 to be converted first for 2027 before they move on to 2030 (and the Olympic Winter Games, editor's note), will have this label name which will be Vélo 2027.
This heritage dimension is paramount: obviously, the event has to serve the Haute-Savoie region in economic terms, in terms of support for cycling, and that's all there is to it, but for the French Cycling Federation, it has to serve the whole of France, and the gamble I'm taking as President of the FFC is to drive the nail in on something we need to support cycling in open spaces, to ensure that our society takes another step forward in its transition to cycling mobility. It's knowing how to ride a bike, it's sport and health, it's everything we promote through our Federation and many other players, and we'll have the chance to do something that's a win-win situation: at the same time, Vélo 2027 supports these development projects and we're creating an endowment fund called "Impact Vélo 2027" within the "Fondation France Vélo", and conversely, every time we have a project in France that is labeled "Vélo 2027", the participants will be concerned by what's going on in Haute-Savoie in August/September 2027, so it'll help spread the word about the event.
The endowment fund will be able to receive sponsorship, and support operations related to health and cycling, all over France.

Events for the general public

We saw it at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games: the "Marathon pour tous", a public event organized alongside the international sporting event and sponsored by Orange, was a huge success. Enough to give ideas to the organizer of the 2027 UCI World Championships? Michel Callot confirms...

🎙️MC: It's a desire of the department, taken up by the organizing committee today, to have a mass event (...) there could be 3 in fact: one in road cycling, but we could also imagine one in mountain biking and one in gravel. The aim is for them to exist by 2026 at the latest, at least a year before the event, because for 2025 we might be a bit stuck for time*, and above all for them to continue afterwards, in terms of the event's legacy, and it will be an opportunity to re-celebrate the event after 2027. The idea will be to use key elements of the route to provide access to the general public, so there will be a cyclosportive for all as early as 2026, and alongside the event in 2027 and beyond... and maybe even a mountain bike tour for all, and gravel for all too. 🚴🏻‍♂️ You're not really a fan of running, so you haven't been looking for a place at the "Marathon pour tous", but you've been dreaming of a similar event on a bike, this might be the opportunity for you!

* Florian was a little more optimistic, mentioning an event possibly as early as September 2025!

The 2027 UCI World Championships, one level below but just as big as the Paris 2024 Olympic Games?

When we see the staggering figures for what this event represents, we're obviously quick to think of the Olympic Games, and we'd even be tempted to make the comparison with Paris 2024, or with the Alps 2030 ...

🎙️MC: It depends on how you look at the figures. Above all, we're going to do something that's bigger than the Winter Olympics on a number of parameters. On very objective data: for example, on the number of nations taking part: 200 nations at the UCI World Championships is bigger than the Winter Olympics, which is understandable for reasons of access. We're expecting at least 10,000 athletes, and we'll probably be over 10,000, depending on how we settle the quota issues with the UCI. Because it's more accessible, we'll have more spectators overall than the Winter Games. The Haute-Savoie region is much more centrally located in Europe, and as we know that this is primarily a European audience, even if some will come from the rest of the world, we estimate - without being too unrealistic - that there will be two million visitors to the Haute-Savoie region for this event. So, on a number of parameters, we're well ahead of the Olympic Games. But despite that, we have to keep our feet on the ground: the Olympic Games are a brand, they're the Olympic Games, and we're not going to take ourselves for what we're not. But in terms of organizational difficulty, there are at least a few parameters that are quite impressive when you look at them and compare them to the Winter Games.

door Thomas Vergouwen
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this publication is published in: World Championships UCI Haute-Savoie 2027

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