Not sure what happened to the recent gravel thread about whether it was killing off road, MTB, or CX. I guess the OP deleted it maybe.
Anyways, this is sort of related to that. At least here in the US, we all kind of know that road and CX are not doing great. I don’t ride MTB so have no idea how that is doing. But CX is non-existent in my area. Road is really just fondos with a couple crits within a few hour drive. Gravel was doing really well, with 7 or 8 events within 3-4 hours.
But, I just found out that my home event is going away, sort of. They killed off the long race but are still putting on the short (45-mi) event. Which seems weird. I reached out to ask about it but all they said was that the long event is not being put on, and I should do the short ride (not even a race anymore). I was super bummed. There are other races in my area, but it was the first gravel event that seems to be dying off.
So I’m wondering if other areas are losing gravel events or having any other signs that the gravel boom is cooling. Obviously there are big bucket list events like Unbound or Big Suger or Steamboat. But really, those events don’t really even interest me anymore now that Lifetime has come in and turned it into a cash draw. Just feels like you’re paying for the name and to help support the pro races. I’m actually super happy Steamboat isn’t a Lifetime event anymore. That’s still on my list. But I’m more just curious if gravel is going to feel the pinch like road or CX. I’ll try to keep politics out of it, but with more and more federal land being sold off, plus the seemingly worsening hatred of cyclists, I feel like it’s a matter of time before even gravel gets hit hard.
So, with that said, is gravel doing well in your region? Are events thriving? Any events that have died off? Are new events popping up? How is the state of gravel in 2026? Are we on an upward trajectory or is the bubble bursting?
I’ve noticed something similar in my area. Gravel still seems popular, but it feels like the huge growth wave has slowed down a bit. The big events continue to attract a lot of riders, but smaller local races and community events seem to be the ones struggling the most.
It would be a shame to lose those smaller events because they’re often where people get into gravel racing and where the community feels strongest. Hopefully organizers can find ways to keep them sustainable without turning every event into a big commercial production. I’m curious to see how gravel evolves over the next few years.
Gravel has more & more adopted the rules of conformity and decorum of road cycling. As that trend continues, I expect gravel will also attain the success and popularity of road cycling.
Capital city racing has put on gravel events in central Texas for years now. They even do night events due to the heat. While not huge events they have quite a few racers and riders show up. A lot of the money goes to local small towns. I have not seen any reduction in the amount of people that show up. I think because it’s a series they are pretty successful.
Sbt Grvl was never owned by Lifetime, it was started and continues to be run by Amy Charity. I can see why one might think that though because from the very start, they kind of modeled it after a Leadville type experience, used similar colors on the website, have a lottery, etc..
As for the state of gravel, I will mostly speak to the MN scene with a little bit of national observations. The number of gravel events has grown a ton in the last five years. And this year we had TWO gravel series attempt to get going. One is run by Chase Wark where he patched together the four events he runs and another is called GravelSota, which is a bunch of independent events that are trying to work together to have standings so that they can maybe help each other get more participation. Here’s the issue though. There are now so many events, sometimes on the same weekends too that is has dilluted things. Throw in that there are still mtb races, a sunday crit series, and just summer stuff like graduations and vacations and now what we seem to have is a ton of events, but all with fairly small participation outside of a couple staple events that have a longer history. Most of them get put in the bucket of, I’ll wait to see what the weather looks like and maybe register the week of since I’m free that weekend and it’s not too far from my house. No one seems to care about winning either series. And both of them have SO many age or otherwise categories that you end up splintering the results into 90 different categories which makes me personally not care about the results. When there are 100 people at a race but each of you is really only racing against 3 or 5 other people, does it really matter if you finish on the podium?
I think this will sort itself out in the next few years locally. The best events will continue and the fringe ones will either go away or will maybe get their 40 people each summer and continue somehow just for fun.
As for national, I see something similar from afar from BWR where they have tried to have maybe too many BWR races and now none of them are really all that big. The pro fields they are getting now are much reduced and on the women’s side is basically non-existent. AZ seems to be the only edition pros do because of where it sits on the calendar. Everyone outside of the lifetime gp would do themselves a favor probably by putting their events in the huge gap between Unbound and Leadville, which is where Steamboat has smartly now settled.
TLDR: Sometimes having too many choices is worse than having just a few big events that everyone will show up to
Southeastern Gravel, the biggest series in the southeast has only 4 events on the calendar this year, seemed like they had 6 or 7 a couple years ago. Some of that is due to Helene hurricane damage, not sure why others dropped off. They still get solid numbers showing up, so may be just promoter fatigue. Other than that, the southeast seems to be holding steady on events
I’m in the Southeast too riding out of NW Georgia and it seems to me that our scene has changed as the concept of racing a local series/season seems to be dying off replaced by the idea that the season is built around 1 big national level event with possibly 1-3 local events beforehand as practice.
We have a handful of large events 300+ with several more that are often <100. I think attendance across the whole season is flat as many participants have coalesced to the larger local events and then springboard to their 1 national even. The scene is healthy but we’re at the end of a period that saw two fast growth spurts 2015-2019 and then 2021-2023; which can appear as decline, when maybe it’s just slower marginal growth or stable.
We have probably 15-20 gravel events in a season within a 4 hour drive. I’ve done an average of 10 gravel races every year since 2014 and almost all of them were within 4 hours round trip.
I think overall there is much smaller competitive cyclist growth than years past. Our CX series was canceled for COVID and when it returned in 2021 120+ racers did not and have not returned. Road has been flat since probably 2015 with several of the road races discontinued as suburban sprawl ate up the low-traffic roads and municipalities made it harder and more expensive to host events. Most road racing is just crit racing, rarely long circuit races.
XC and XCM are also flat, a lot of the adult energy for those disciplines is now competing for supporting their NICA-racing children. Our weather is also worse the past few years. Heavy precipitation Spring and Summer means that often racing is done in the wet or canceled. More than half the MTB races I’ve done the past few years have been on very wet trails or while it was actively raining. It dries out in the fall but by then enthusiasm has waned and attendance is down anyway.
We’re in good shape here but at times I’ve been at an event that was 200+ people in the recent past and looked around to count maybe 50 and felt like things were going bad, but then out of nowhere a new event would appear and draw a huge crowd.
I’ll also add that some of our local promoters have been repeatedly infected by this idea that holding an event the weekend of a holiday will somehow bolster participation. Races the weekend of Memorial Day, Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, Labor Day, Halloween when the 31st is Th/F/Sat, Saturday after Thanksgiving, etc.
Totally craters participation and has often led to canceling an event later on. I’m not sure why they keep trying it?
It seems this is how the forum functionality works. We spend a good amount of time, especially on technical topics, and they only exist at the whim of the original thread starter and can be deleted at any time. This makes it very challenging to participate. There was great discussion in that thread and then it was gone, for seemingly no reason.
For me the “professionalisation” of some of the bigger races has sort of killed my interest in going to them. I have zero interest in doing the local big race, BWR CA, due to the feeling I got last I did it that anyone outside the pros was only there to make up the numbers and hand over their money to ensure the pros could get looked after.
There’s till a healthy “grassroots” scene in SoCal supported by people who seem to genuinely love the sport. Events like the, free, South Bay Brew-Baix, LA Tourist race series, Spirit World and, even bigger events like, Rock Cobbler have a different vibe to those with a more (inter)national focus and I’ll continue to support and enjoy riding these types of races but would be hard pressed to want to pay and turn up to a ride where I’m very much viewed as a second class citizen
Interesting. I tend to only race the local stuff, and I know my main group of guys (5 or 6) who all race the gravel races around here are the same. I think the furthest any of us traveled for a race was like 6 hours. But we’re also not the type that feels like flying out for races I guess. I did look at the race that got canceled and we had 38 racers last year. So not massive but a good amount for a small local race. The 45mi “ride” had 58 people. I call it a ride because they specifically mention it’s not a race.
I actually raced Sumter Forest earlier this year. Fun race. Would have loved to do more of that series but it’s a bit of a drive. I did see it was only 4 races this year, I didn’t realize it used to be bigger.
i might be in the minority here, but i really enjoy these big events with the pros. Am i aware i am helping subsidize the pros? yeap. Do I care? NO. I enjoy TF out of my gravel content, so if my going to events like Big sugar, unbound, leadville helps to fund that, I am more than ok with that. I get a lot from it too in the enjoyment factor. I think those events are a ton of fun and they certainly have more support.
locally (SE) there a lot of events, with 2 competing series that over lap with the XCM/XCO races. I do think participation is flat in the XC area, and way down from the highs of the early 2000s. There is a fair amount of prize money to be had in our local gravel races, so between that and the lesser number of raod races, we see a lot of cross over from road. Far more than from mtb. meaning I as a mtb am trying to learn road tactics because that will be more important this next gravel series than increasing power.
Kansas City area chiming in. Gravel is king. The Great Plains Gravel Cup is currently the gold standard. A six race series (x4 KS x1 MO x1 NE) here. Multiple distances in each, averaging 250-700 for each event across all distances. MTB is growing, the area is investing in more trails and events. Crits, x2 race series, one in March and July. Road is dead. CX is dying with a single series in the fall. Could race gravel every weekend from mid-March to the start of November if willing to drive 2-3 hours. Tons of over lap, x5 or so events will get over 100 partcipates and stick around. Many races pop up for 1-3 years with around x50 participates than fade away. Seems every bike shop trys to start an event. The GPGC is great, in it’s second year. But it is taking a hit on the other events.
That seems like a somewhat common perspective when it comes to the larger events and I agree that smaller “grass roots” events can bring a different vibe. But I think the big “corporate” event negativity is a bit misguided and largely a byproduct of people just hating anything associated with big corporate entities. I can’t speak for Ironman events (which also get a lot of hate), but I’ve gotten to know a few of the key folks behind some of the big Lifetime events (particularly Leadville and Unbound) and their passion for cycling and putting on events is off the charts. And most of the teams putting on these races are fairly independent, not some corporate group sitting at Lifetime corporate in MN.
Big “bucket list” events and small “grass roots” events both have their good and bad. I like both flavors, but I can’t fault anyone for shying away from one or the other. I just don’t think calling the big events a “cash draw” is a fair assessment from what I’ve seen (at least on the Lifetime side). The big events have big registration fees, but big expenses to go with it. I’ll spend $70 to do a local 60 mile gravel race that might have a 2-300 people in it, but that doesn’t feel that different then doing a spicy local group ride with friends. There certainly aren’t any butterflies at the start line of a local race like there are with a big event competing against riders from all over the world. Both types of events are fun, but totally different experiences with different cost of entry.
From what I can see, gravel events haven’t dropped off, but are getting a bit diluted by the number of competing events that often overlap on the calendar. When that happens, it’s natural that some of those events won’t make it. Just like in anything, you are either growing or shrinking/dying.
I’m in Perth, Western Australia and Gravel feels like its king now. We do have the UCI world championships here in about 10 weeks time on the Seven Course (https://sevengravelrace.com)
There’s about 5-6 other gravel events within 4 hours drive. There used to be plenty of road events but they have slowly died off. I believe it’s a combination of local councils making it hard (won’t give permission for road closures, want lots of $$$ to close roads & insurance costs.
Add to the mix getting abused by motorists for being on the road, getting abused by pedestrians for using shared paths its just not worth the hassle.
With Gravel most of these problems go away, it’s less stressful and much more enjoyable. And I guess events pop up around this change in behaviour. Just a perspective from here, not sure this would be the experience in other places.
I was lucky enough to do Unbound this year and just did the Rift in Iceland. Unbound was like Alp d’Huez, you have to do it but it’s a bit underwhelming (For me anyway) but the Rift was amazing. River and Glacier crossings, a true need for big tires (I actually rode my XC bike because my gravel bike only did 45’s), more ‘spirit’.
The Rift is absolutely on my bucket list. Iceland is so incredibly beautiful. And it’s such a unique route. Unbound on the other hand doesn’t interest me in the slightest. You could give me a free entry and I don’t even think I’d do it. I’m sorry but riding through rural Kansas does absolutely nothing for me. SBT and Traka are on my wish list as well.
I agree, Unbound was an experience the way Disney is an experience. But beyond the crazy mud this year, the course wasn’t much different from my local area. When I did Leadville last year, the course was so different from what I’d normally ride that beyond the cool experience of the “race”, it was a memorable thing. I’d go ride in Leadville anytime again. I’d ride in the highlands of Iceland again. I wouldn’t ride in Kansas again. That said, lot of people do that race year after year so I don’t want to yuck their yum.
I can see how Leadville would be preferable for many both being a likely more interesting course but also more visually appealing.
But I think when you narrow down Unbound to strictly the course you’re removing some of the overall experience of the event that draws people to it.
To me part of the appeal is the energy of so many people there from Tuesday to Sunday excited to race with nothing else to do all week in the middle of nowhere but ride bikes, talk about bikes, and talk about tire choice. And for me, on race day suffering for 200 miles and meeting a bunch of different people is super fun.