2026 became the breakthrough season that established Paula Blasi (UAE Team ADQ) as a genuine leader. After winning the Durango-Durango Emakumeen Saria with a solo attack on the Alto de Goiuria early in the year, she delivered the biggest result of her career to that point by winning the Amstel Gold Race Ladies, riding clear of the strongest names in the women's peloton in the Limburg hills. In June she returned to the Tour Féminin International des Pyrénées — the race where, a year earlier, she had led a GC bid for the first time — and won it outright: a Tourmalet master-class on the Stage 2 queen stage, attacking more than 10 km from the summit and soloing to a 1:59 win in Bagnères-de-Bigorre, banked the overall and the climber's classification in a single afternoon, and she controlled the final stage to seal a UAE Team ADQ 1-2. The combination of a Monument-level Ardennes win and a stage-race overall with a summit-class solo marked her out, at 23, as both a classics threat and an emerging GC and climbing leader.