It was only five months ago that Primož Roglič was wearing ankle socks at the Tour de France and allegedly telling the rest of the peloton that he didn’t care.
In that same race, his much younger Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe teammate Florian Lipowitz outperformed him to secure the final spot on the podium, and a week after the race ended it was announced that Roglič’s long-time rival Remco Evenepoel would be joining Red Bull for the 2026 season.
It has led to many assuming that Roglič, who turned 36 in October, is preparing for his final year in the peloton. But the Slovenian has insisted that despite his blasé comments and his incredibly relaxed demeanour, he has no plans to retire in a year’s time.
Speaking at Red Bull’s 2026 launch event in Mallorca, Roglič quipped that he was hoping that the team boss Ralph Denk would announce a new contract extension for him on stage, as he did with Lipowitz, Giulio Pellizzari, and Lorenzo Finn.
“I was not mentioned before by Ralph with the extensions – I was maybe hoping a bit that he would but he didn’t say my name,” Roglič chuckled.
“I want to race at this moment for 10 more years. As long as I will feel that hunger, or as long as it will make me happy at the end – because I have to be happy and I have to enjoy it – I will continue.
“Do you want it or not? It’s somehow connected with the results that you are achieving, but it’s not everything. We will see. I have to go day by day, and year by year.
“[Hunger] is the thing that probably all winners have inside them. It’s hard to say that you are born with it, but somehow you grow up and you have it. When you’re 10-years-old or whatever, competitiveness and drive are all the things you need [to succeed], and it’s still inside me. You wake up and you want to do everything to be the best.”
Though Red Bull rarely announce the length of a rider’s contract, it is widely believed that Roglič’s deal with the team will expire at the end of the 2026 season. Would he drop to a lower-ranked team in order to continue his career?
“I don’t want to think about that,” he said. “I need the hunger and the will to still compete with the best ones to be the best. So in this case you shouldn’t look down but up.”
(Image credit: Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe/Maximilian Fries)
With Lipowitz and Evenepoel preparing to lead Red Bull’s two-pronged attack at next year’s Tour, there is no space for Roglič. Instead, he will head to the Vuelta to attempt to win a record-breaking fifth title.
“You can suggest that [he was surprised not be in the Tour squad],” he said. “If I could choose one race to win, I would sign for the Tour de France. It’s not a secret. But the reality is different.
“The level that I was finishing [last year’s Tour] was different. The first point to consider about myself is that you know how to find the way to be competitive, to compete for the victory.
“If I’m second in the GC of the Tour or winning the Vuelta, I know what I choose. I win the Vuelta. It’s simple. It’s easy to so say it, but to do it… even trying to win a stage in [February’s Volta a] Valencia is hard.”
That all said, Roglič isn’t ruling out the possibility of him making an appearance in either the Tour or the Giro d’Italia next season. “If I’ve learned something over the years, it’s that there are always some chances.
“The fact is you need to put something in the plan. You need to have some planning because there are a lot of people around and we cannot all be freelancers.
“But if you are capable of achieving good results, it’s normally not a problem to go to the race, But it’s more the first one to get to the level [required] that can achieve that.”
