This page covers Lotte Kopecky's 2026 season race-by-race, including results, roles, key moments, and incidents for each race. Each entry is a spoiler for the corresponding race. Read no further if you intend to watch any of them unspoiled.
Lotte Kopecky underlined her status as the most complete one-day racer in the women's peloton across the 2026 spring. After a win at Nokere Koerse earlier in the week, she delivered the headline result of her early season at Milano-Sanremo Donne, reading the chaotic race perfectly: distanced briefly on the Cipressa, she fought back, made the decisive Poggio selection off Puck Pieterse's move, then won the five-up sprint on the Via Roma for another Monument. The cobbled classics didn't reward her in kind — fourth at the Ronde van Vlaanderen (+1:04) and fourth at Paris-Roubaix Femmes (+1:30) left her just off the podium in both — but a Monument win and back-to-back top-fours in the biggest cobbled races confirmed a spring of relentless front-of-race racing.
After three near-misses, Kopecky finally won, taking the reduced sprint in Antas de Ulla ahead of teammate Van der Breggen to claim the stage and the red leader's jersey. It was the centrepiece of the points-classification campaign she would carry all the way to the green jersey in Madrid-style fashion on the Angliru.
Another runner-up finish, four seconds back, as Kerbaol's late move stuck. Kopecky kept accumulating high finishes and bonus seconds that were quietly building toward the green points jersey she would seal by the end of the week.
Won the points classification on the back of a relentlessly consistent week: second on stages 1 and 3, the stage 4 win in Antas de Ulla, and a selfless lead-out that delivered the stage 5 win to teammate Bredewold (Kopecky herself finishing second). She wore red after stage 4 and was the engine of SD Worx's stage-winning machine.
Second on the opening day, beaten by four seconds by Rüegg on the rising finish. It set the tone for Kopecky's week: a constant presence in the sprints and reduced-bunch finales that would build into the points jersey.
A former Roubaix winner (2024) caught on the wrong side of the day's only decisive split. When Ferrand-Prévot detonated the race after Mons-en-Pévèle, Kopecky wasn't in the front group, and with Vas the only SD Worx rider up the road — soon dropped — the team's leaders were left chasing. Kopecky led the pursuit home for fourth at 1:30, the strongest of the riders who missed the move, but it was a podium-less Roubaix decided by positioning rather than her undoubted cobbled class.
The three-time winner, chasing a record fourth on home roads, made the front chase group but had no answer to Vollering's Kwaremont attack. With SD Worx hit hard by crashes — Wiebes out, others delayed — she rode the finale isolated and won the sprint for fourth, more than a minute down.
Active in the mid-race attacks but caught out by SD Worx's measured approach to the chase, the world champion ended up in the front group without a clean shot at the win, finishing twelfth at seven seconds. A subdued ride by her standards on Flemish roads.
A masterclass in reading Milano-Sanremo. Kopecky was briefly distanced when Niewiadoma drove the Cipressa but fought back to the bunch. On the Poggio she was one of only four able to follow Pieterse's decisive acceleration, then sat composed in the front five, letting Włodarczyk and Pieterse do the work into Sanremo. When Pieterse opened the sprint on the Via Roma, Kopecky came off her wheel and powered past for her biggest win of the young season and another Monument to her palmarès, fresh off a win at Nokere Koerse earlier in the week.