Peter Sagan’s Former Team Saved, Another Door Shut for Primož Roglič

TotalEnergies — the second-tier French team where Peter Sagan ended his career — is saved by the bell as teams and riders are getting nervous as 2026 winds down.

Team manager Jean-René Bernaudeau revealed Tuesday that XEFI, a French IT company, committed to three years to keep the long-running team in the peloton.

With just weeks before winter team camps, the announcement went down to the wire to meet registration deadlines and keep riders under contract.

“It’s late, there was pressure, there was anticipation, that much we understand. But today, we savor this feeling of peace and confidence all the more,” sport director Stéphane Heulot told L’Equipe.

Heulot said the team will see a mix of veterans and rising talent for 2027, mostly French, but with more international tilt in the coming season.

Is there room for Primoz Roglič, the superstar Slovenian who is still hunting for a deal? Probably not.

“I would say that today the roster is almost complete. A shock transfer? I don’t know who we could talk about today. Roglič maybe? But honestly, that’s not something we have on the table,” he said. “I don’t want to do a publicity stunt like some teams have done when they don’t actually have the means to hire him.”

The deal saves the team from the edge of oblivion. TotalEnergies confirmed the end of its long-running sponsorship with the team, but appears to be remaining in cycling with partnership with Netcompany-Ineos.

After flirting with international riders like Sagan — who raced his final two seasons with the team — and Edvald Boasson Hagen, the team pivoted back to its French roots the past few years. It won a Tour de France stage in 2024 with Antony Turgis and provided a pipeline for more French riders to start the Tour.

The team was founded in 2000 and has raced the Tour every year since.

Fans will recognize the different names over the years, from Bonjour, Brioches La Boulangère, Bouygues Télécom, Europcar, Direct Énergie, and TotalEnergies, but this has been Bernaudeau’s baby.

Four teams shuttering in 2026

The late-hour save is good news for French cycling, which is facing the same problems of rising costs while trying to compete against a few elite super teams at the top of the pyramid.

Coming out of 2026, no major WorldTour teams are facing imminent closure, but there are a few teams in the lower ranks that look to be closing.

France’s St Michel-Auber93 — a modest team from a Parisian suburb that raced a few Tours over the years — is shutting down its long-running men’s that dates back to the 1990s. Management will pivot toward backing the women’s team and hope for a Tour de France Femmes invitation in 2027.

Hitec Products, a women’s Norwegian Continental team, confirmed its shutting down at the end of this season, citing difficulties to get into major races.

Two more second-tier men’s teams that played out-sized roles are also shutting at the end of 2026.

Team Flanders-Baloise, with its DNA dating back to the 1990s, is folding after the Flemish government withdrew key public funding. Long a fixture in the classics, the team was a “talent farm” for budding Belgian riders to make the jump to the WorldTour.

Thomas De Gendt, Sep Vanmarcke, Victor Campenaerts, Oliver Naesen, and Yves Lampaert all did stints with the team over the years.

Kern Pharma, the Spanish ProTeam since 2020, is also restructuring for 2027 after the longtime pharmaceutical company did not extend its sponsorship. Riders like Pablo Castrillo, Roger Adrìa and Raúl García Pierna all raced on the team before bouncing to the WorldTour.

Riders have been told they’re free to find new teams and the squad could continue at a lower level next season.

And what about Roglič?

Rumors keep flying about Roglič.

The Slovenian showed up this week in Taiwan, but there’s still no confirmed team for the four-time Vuelta a España champion.

The 37-year-old parted ways with Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe after three season, and it remains uncertain if there will be a closing-hour deal.

Contract talks with several teams, including Visma-Lease a Bike, Unibet Rose Rockets, Pinarello-Q36.5, and Lotto-Intermarché, have all apparently collapsed.

Roglič — once of cycling’s “Big Four” — remains ambivalent about his future and even whether he wants to continue racing.

He still finished second at the Vuelta a España and earned nearly 1,000 UCI points in 2026, which would be valuable to teams chasing a WorldTour license, but a reported $2 million asking price might have to come down if he wants to find a deal this late in the season.