The change in date for the women’s Giro has resulted in a strong field lining up for the nine days of racing. Starting eight weeks before the women’s Tour means there is now plenty of time to recover from one and mount a challenge in the second, as Demi Vollering plans to do this year.
While the Dutchwoman starts as favourite she’ll be up agains compatriot and former coach Anna van der Breggen and reigning champion Elisa Longo Borghini.
On the flat stages it’s hard to see past Lorena Wiebes while young Brit Cat Ferguson will hope to contest the punchier stages that aren’t hard enough to bring out the GC contenders.
Read More: Giro d’Italia Women 2026 | Giro d’Italia Women 2026 start list
Demi Vollering starts as favourite
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Demi Vollering
29 | FDJ United-SUEZ | Ned
Previous Giro starts: 2
Best GC result: 3rd (2021)
Best stage result: 2nd (x3, 2021)
Demi Vollering has made no secret of the intense focus she has placed on the Italian Grand Tour this year – as well as the Tour de France Femmes in August – with the revised calendar being a key driver.
“Of course, the new place in the calendar influenced my decision,” Vollering said on the Giro Women website. “It works much better alongside the Tour, so it’s possible to aim for strong performances in both races.
“Coming back to the Giro felt like a natural choice,” she added. “It’s a race with a great history and I’m happy to have it back in my programme.”
The Dutch rider has enjoyed a superb start to the season this year – perhaps her best ever. With victories in four Classics, including two Monuments (Tour of Flanders and Liège-Bastogne-Liège) as well as stages and the GC at Setmana Volta Valenciana back in February, she has won more times than not in her 10 race days so far.
Both of her Monument victories were solo efforts, with a particularly impressive performance at Liège-Bastogne-Liège that saw her attack with 34km to go and hold off the combined efforts of Puck Pieterse, Kasia Niewiadoma and Anna van der Breggen to win by a minute and-a-half.
The 29-year-old is an all-rounder in the mould of now-retired Annemiek van Vleuten: a powerful engine complemented by a world-beating climbing ability. It makes her an indomitable force in races like the Giro d’Italia.
Unsurprisingly, Vollering opted to miss the very recent Vuelta Femenina and her most recent Strava activities suggest she is preparing for the race with a mountains training camp in Spain’s Sierra Nevada.
She has won the Vuelta twice and the Tour Femmes once already, and will be mimicking Jonas Vingegaard in his attempt to add the Giro to his palmarès, thus securing career wins in all three Grand Tours. Unlike Vingegaard, Vollering has ridden the Italian race before, finishing third back in 2021. She will hope to better that result this year – anything but a win, in fact, will be a disappointment.
Marlon Reusser will lead the Spanish Movistar team
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Marlen Reusser
34 | Movistar | Swi
Previous Giro starts: 3
Best GC result: 2nd (2025)
Best stage result: 1st (2025)
This is set to be the first race for the Swiss rider since she crashed hard at the Tour of Flanders, fracturing a vertebra in her lower back. That was six weeks ago, and though there has been little word from her since, she has been pictured on her own Instagram account riding a new – and heavily disguised – Canyon time trial bike.
Her Flanders crash was the latest set-back in an early season she would probably rather forget. She was also forced to abandon the UAE Tour in early February after suffering hand and knee lacerations in a crash.
Second here last year and twice GC runner-up at the Vuelta Femenina, Reusser would usually be one of the top favourites for a race like the Giro Women. But her recent injury may well see her relegated her to wildcard status at most.
Longo Borghini is aiming for three in a row
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Elisa Longo Borghini
34 | UAE Team ADQ | Italy
Previous Giro starts: 7
Best GC result: 1st (2024, 2025)
Best stage result: 3x1st (2020, 2023, 2024)
The home favourite and defending champion will go into this year’s race looking for a third Giro win on the bounce, and you’d be brave to bet against her. After winning the UAE Tour (again) in February, the 34-year-old Italian champion has had an illness-impacted 2026, missing Milan-San Remo altogether, finishing well down the field at Dwars Door Vlaanderen (which she won in 2025) and placing a disappointing eighth at the Tour of Flanders.
Now back in rude health, the super experienced rider and double-Olympic medal winner, who is capable of attacking and defending in equal measure, will push race-favourite Demi Vollering all the way. Borghini wore the Maglia Rosa for the entire race in 2024, and last year became only the second female Italian rider (after legendary five-time winner Fabiana Luperini) to win the Giro more than once – she knows this grand tour inside out, and a third consecutive victory is very possible.
Marion Bunel will be a threat in the mountains
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Marion Bunel
21 | Visma-Lease a Bike | France
Previous Giro starts: 0
Best GC result: n/a
Best stage result: n/a
After coming second overall in last month’s Vuelta Femenina, Marion Bunel has confirmed herself as a rider to watch. The young French climber stood alongside Paula Blasi and Anna van der Breggen on the fearsome Angliru having finished the Spanish race as the best young rider; and should be considered a serious threat going into the Giro Donne.
La Vuelta followed Bunel’s now-established form. In the Tour of Catalonia, the 21-year-old finished just 30 seconds behind overall GC champion, Demi Vollering, on the Queen Stage after winning the Tour de l’Avenir a year before in a smattering of mountain breakaways.
A dominant climber, Bunel only graduated from the Continental ranks at the start of 2025, and has also proved herself a rider capable of attacking across multiple days of riding. One of the wave of young riders touted to shake up the established order, Bunel will line up at the Giro fresh from a string of podium finishes.
Lorena Wiebes is once again the sprinter to beat
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Lorena Wiebes
27 | SD Worx-Protime | Ned
Previous Giro starts: 3
Best GC result: 48th (2021)
Best stage result: 1st (x5, 2021,23,25)
It won’t be lost on her rivals that Lorena Wiebes has morphed from a very strong fast finisher to a very strong fast finishing rouleur. As such she goes into the Giro d’Italia Women not just as favourite for the three flat stages (one, two and six), but also as a real danger for one or two of the hillier stages.
She has been a world-beater for some time now, as her Giro d’Italia results above illustrate. She has won stages in each of her three participations, and it would be a surprise to walk away empty-handed this time round. Whether she will reprise her points classification win from last year remains to be seen.
So far this season she has won 50% of her 16 race days, as well as registering some high placings in the Classics. She has never worn the maglia rosa before, but with a flat stage to start off, this could well be her year.
Is a fifth victory too much to ask from Anna van der Breggen?
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Anna van der Breggen
36 | SD Worx-Protime | Ned
Previous Giro starts: 13
Best GC result: 1st (x4 2015, 17, 20, 21)
Best stage result: 1st (x2, 2019, 21)
Anna van der Breggen has done something her former protégé Demi Vollering has never managed to do – win the Giro d’Italia. Not just once, however, but four times, putting her joint-second overall with her great rival Annemiek van Vleuten for GC crowns. The last time was in 2021, though, before her three year ‘retirement’ which then got reversed.
The Dutchwoman was second at the recent Vuelta España Femenina, proving that she is in good form, but also beatable on the toughest mountain stages. Has the potential to be Vollering’s biggest threat, but will also be part of an SD Worx team with a split strategy, given the presence of Lorena Wiebes. Van der Breggen was sixth at last year’s Giro, and will hope to be higher up the top 10 this season, perhaps even on the podium. As a multiple time trial world champion, stage four’s individual TT could be the day her overall challenge is built on.
Ferguson is making her Giro debut
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Cat Ferguson
20 | Movistar | GBr
Previous Giro starts: 0
Best GC result: n/a
Best stage result: n/a
The British phenomenon makes her debut at the Giro, on a stage-hunting brief. Ferguson has only raced one Grand Tour to date, last year’s Vuelta, so everything is still pretty new, but the 20-year-old has risen to every challenge thrown at her to date.
Speaking to Cycling Weekly earlier this year, Ferguson said: “My personal goal is to look for stages. The Giro is hard, but then there are a lot of opportunities for the sprints. I’ll be trying to do my best in the sprint stages.” According to her, the Vuelta last year was a “baptism of fire”: “It’s 10 days of carb loading, and it’s very different to a junior stage race.
If you don’t manage to get that pasta down you at dinner, then the next day you really feel it.” If she can manage the chaos of nine stages, there are sprint and punchy opportunities through the nine days.
Elisa Balsamo will be hunting for more stage wins
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Elisa Balsamo
28, Lidl-Trek, Ita
Previous Giro starts: 2
Best GC result: 49th (2022)
Best stage result: 1st (x2 2022)
Perhaps surprisingly for one of the best Italian riders of her generation, Elisa Balsamo has only ridden her home Grand Tour twice, but hasn’t missed an edition of the Tour de France Femmes.
Perhaps that points to priorities, but the new slow for the Giro in the schedule allows for the Piedmontese rider to tackle roads familiar to her. Like the rest of her Lidl-Trek team, Balsamo has struggled for wins in 2026, but one is surely on the horizon, with a string of solid results.
Two second places, including at the Ronde van Brugge, and third place at Scheldeprijs shows that the sprinter is ready. Her problem, however, is that there is a woman faster than everyone in the peloton, and she’s riding the Giro: Lorena Wiebes. No-one is unbeatable, though, and on the punchier days, it is plausible that Balsamo might have the edge, this is a rider who has won the Trofeo Alfredo Binda thrice, after all.
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