The courses for the first UCI Gravel World Championships outside Europe have been revealed, with the elite men taking on 140.7km and the elite women 123.1km on the challenging 2026 routes carved out from the plentiful gravel roads around Nannup, Australia.
It's a course for the October 10-11 event that has many of the features that have become familiar to riders of the SEVEN Gravel Race, one of the very first events in the UCI Gravel World Series when it began in 2022.
The start and finish will remain in the small Western Australian town of Nannup, and there is a raft of well-tested climbs which help contribute to the 3,625m of elevation gain for the men's elite race and 3,100m of climbing for the women's elite competitors. The course, too, will be far heavier on gravel than any of the four previous UCI Gravel World Championships, which have taken place across Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands.
"With a minimum of 80% gravel on every route, and wide roads that open the race up for genuine bunch racing, these courses offer a tactical dimension rarely seen at this level and a gravel experience unlike any previous World Championships," said event and race director Stephen Gallagher.
The fifth edition of the UCI Gravel World Championships starts with a 9km paved section, then heads into a relatively flat gravel section of about the same length before the climbing begins. The course delivers three distinct sections separated by flatter parts, which can offer a 15 to 20 minute reprieve, though Gallagher told Cyclingnews that the distinctive feature of the bulk of the course is its consistent climbing.
"And the climbing is unique in the sense that it's not massively long, but it is continuous, one-to-three-kilometre climbs. Where at other races or other events you might have the climb at the start or the climb at the end, but here it's basically the whole way through the race," said Gallagher.
"The majority of the climbs are a consistent gradient as well, so it's not like you're going up a brick wall of a climb as the gradients are anywhere between 5% to 8% … but you are still being hit by continuous climbing throughout the race, and the fatigue generated by the end of the race is quite significant."
It will be a similar course to the UCI Gravel World Series event of SEVEN on May 16, as the course sweeps out through the Blackwood Valley into the pine plantations, across rolling farmland hills and through forests before once again heading back to the off-road cycling hub of Nannup. It includes several key climbs that have become regulars at the event which started in 2017 – from Brockman to Ellis Creek and also Arcadia for the longer elite men's course – though the end section is a new twist for 2026.
This extra spectator-friendly addition means that just when the route looks to be through the toughest of the climbs, and making a beeline for the start/finish line, riders will make a left-hand turn. That will take them onto a 27km loop around the town that delivers another section of wearing ascents before descending toward the flat paved run to the finish line in Nannup, where the new gravel World Champions will be crowned.
The elite women's race will take place on Saturday, October 10, and the elite men will race on Sunday, October 11, with an additional loop including the Arcadia climb added in at the far end of the elite men's course.
