Egan Bernal recently flew from Colombia to Copenhagen for the Netcompany-INEOS end-of-year gathering, where riders and staff met the squad’s new title sponsor and began preparations for 2027.

Since the meeting, Dario Cioni, who works across the team’s performance and academy programmes, has told Italian website bici.pro that the 2019 Tour de France winner will be racing again next year.

“Bernal is a winner. He’s not happy finishing tenth, and rightly so. After riding the Giro and the Tour, he didn’t feel he could still be competitive, so he preferred to end his season early. But he’ll be back as normal for 2027,” Cioni told bici.pro.

The context for the retirement talk was a thin season. Bernal finished 10th at the 2026 Giro d’Italia and 20th at the Tour de France without a stage win, and he decided to shut down his campaign after the Tour. Earlier in October, with no public word on what came next, cycling journalist Daniel Benson raised the possibility that the Colombian, at 29, might be considering an early end to his career.

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Bernal’s own guarded answer

Bernal addressed the speculation himself on 8 October in a personal Instagram post picked up by Domestique Cycling, confirming that his existing deal with Netcompany-Ineos actually runs through to the end of 2029, not 2026 as some reports had assumed.

“I have a contract with the team until the end of 2029 and, for now, my intention is to start next season,” he wrote.

He also said he had decided to stop racing after the Tour because he “needed some time for myself, to rest, disconnect a bit, and recover that peace of mind”.

The post was not a cast-iron commitment to a full 2027 programme, which is why Cioni’s language about Bernal being “back as normal” is the first clear signal from inside the team.

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Brailsford still chasing a Tour win

The Copenhagen meeting also doubled as a reset moment for a team that has not won the Tour de France since Bernal did in 2019, and that remains the project’s stated goal under Dave Brailsford.

“With Dave Brailsford, the ambition is clear: he wants to win the Tour de France again,” Cioni said in the same interview.

Bernal’s 2027 race calendar has not been announced. The WorldTour season opens in Australia at the Tour Down Under in January.

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