After a year-long absence, Campagnolo returns to the UCI WorldTour with Team Cofidis in 2025. The iconic Italian component manufacturer was notably absent from the pro peloton in 2024 after its deal with Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale concluded at the end of 2023.
The new four-year deal with the French program Team Cofidis ensures that Campagnolo’s parts are raced at the sport’s highest level for at least the 2025 season, with Campy’s contract with Team Cofidis running through 2028.
The Component Details
Campy’s partnership with Cofidis equips team bikes with the full Campagnolo ecosystem, including the brand’s Bora Ultra WTO wheels. Campy provides the premium-level Super Record Wireless components for Team Cofidis’ Look road bikes. The squad’s time trial bikes are outfitted using previous-generation Super Record EPS parts, which (while 12-speed) are not a fully wireless system like the SWR parts.
In the photography provided to Bicycling by Campagnolo and Team Cofidis, we see the team bikes featuring 54/39T chainrings, larger than the rings currently offered on Super Record Wireless cranksets. For consumers, the largest size ring available on SRW cranks is (currently) a 50/34T combo. However, a 50-tooth ring will not cut it for top pros given the speed of the modern WorldTour peloton. Cofidis will likely use chainrings from the Super Record S Wireless group, which are offered in the 54/39T pairing shown in the photos.
A Four Year Deal...But
While Campy’s agreement with Team Cofidis runs through 2028, there is a realistic chance the team will be demoted from the WorldTour in the 2026 relegation/promotion cycle instituted by the UCI. The system ranks teams based on their UCI points hauls from the 2023, 2024, and 2025 seasons.
The top 18 ranked teams stay in the WorldTour for another three years until the next promotion/relegation cycle. As of this writing, Cofidis is ranked 20th with 7,889.8 points. They must pass Arkéa-B&B Hotels (8,735 points) and Uno-X Mobility (8,938.7 points) to move to 18th and remain in the WorldTour. It is an achievable but difficult goal.
Our Analysis
For Campagnolo and its loyal fans, the brand’s return to top-tier road racing is excellent news—because at its core, Campagnolo’s products are designed for it. Racing is the reason for Campagnolo’s existence: An idea that sprang from the heat of competition—struggling to remove his wheel mid-race to change a flat—inspired Tullio Campagnolo to found his eponymous company.
The sponsorship also allows Campagnolo to return to its golden rule: proving products in competition before being sold to the public. A top-level team racing and training on Campy’s components for four years will surely benefit the brand’s product development.
That development and testing could lead to new products sooner rather than later. A patent application published on October 24, 2024, shows Campagnolo’s ideas for a redesigned shift lever. And it includes a return of Campy’s iconic thumb shifter. Hopefully, this means we’ll see some new and unreleased prototypes surface at upcoming team camps and early-season races.
Campagnolo thrives most when challenged to make the best products for the world’s most demanding competition. We expect everyone at Campagnolo will be very motivated to prove its capabilities on this very visible stage.
While we do not think Super Record Wireless—in its current form—meets the performance standards set by SRAM’s Red AXS or Shimano’s Dura-Ace Di2 groups, SRW hasn’t seen much race-day testing. It only saw minimal use under the Ag2r-Citroën team in 2023, the last year Campagnolo was in the pro peloton. And if anyone demands improved performance from a component group, it is a pro cycling team.
We are curious to see if and how Campagnolo may roll out component changes when the team starts using the parts in competition. In the immediate future, we expect firmware changes to address some shifting speed and smoothness issues we experienced in our test riding. However, the ergonomics of the shift buttons and the brake feel will take longer to address.
Ultimately, only time will tell what direction Campagnolo takes the Super Record Wireless group. However, signing a WorldTour team is an important step in the right direction for the iconic brand to regain some of its flagging reputation and product performance.
A gear editor for his entire career, Matt’s journey to becoming a leading cycling tech journalist started in 1995, and he’s been at it ever since; likely riding more cycling equipment than anyone on the planet along the way. Previous to his time with Bicycling, Matt worked in bike shops as a service manager, mechanic, and sales person. Based in Durango, Colorado, he enjoys riding and testing any and all kinds of bikes, so you’re just as likely to see him on a road bike dressed in Lycra at a Tuesday night worlds ride as you are to find him dressed in a full face helmet and pads riding a bike park on an enduro bike. He doesn’t race often, but he’s game for anything; having entered road races, criteriums, trials competitions, dual slalom, downhill races, enduros, stage races, short track, time trials, and gran fondos. Next up on his to-do list: a multi day bikepacking trip, and an e-bike race.
Test Editor Dan Chabanov got his start in cycling as a New York City bike messenger but quickly found his way into road and cyclocross racing, competing in professional cyclocross races from 2009 to 2019 and winning a Master’s National Championship title in 2018. Prior to joining Bicycling in 2021, Dan worked as part of the race organization for the Red Hook Crit, as a coach with EnduranceWERX, as well as a freelance writer and photographer.
