Brandon McNulty won the 2026 Veneto Classic on 18 October in Bassano del Grappa, wearing the world champion’s jersey. The American from UAE Team Emirates XRG went clear 50 km from the finish with Anthon Charmig, then dropped the Dane on the gravel climb of the Diesel Farm, 10.6 km from the line, and finished the 158.5 km from Cittadella alone.
It is the first time a reigning world champion has won the Veneto Classic, and McNulty’s first win in the rainbow jersey he took in Montréal. His teammate Pavel Sivakov was third. The best Italian was Christian Scaroni, sixth.
Six times over the Tisa cobbles
The route starts flat: some forty kilometres through Cittadella, Sandrigo and Breganze, then the first rolling roads towards Colceresa and Marostica. That is where the real race begins, on a circuit that takes in the Tisa six times and the Rosina twice.
The Tisa is short and nasty: 330 metres of cobbles at an average of 15.2%, with ramps of 20%, about fifty metres of climbing that hurt because they come back every 12 km or so. The Rosina is the opposite: 2.1 km at 6.5%, a climb for rhythm. In the finale come the Diesel Farm, 1.3 km above 10% with a gravel section, and Contrà Soarda, 400 metres at 13% less than 3 km from Bassano. In all, about 2,200 metres of climbing.
From the last ramp to the line in Bassano there are just under 3 km: too few to close on a rider who crests Contrà Soarda with a few seconds in hand. Whoever wants to win here has to reach the top alone.
The break forms on the Rosina and becomes the race
Berthet alone, then nineteen from Marostica
The pace was high from the start: after an hour the average was 48.1 km/h. Manuel Oioli and Riccardo Colombo tried at kilometre four and were caught at kilometre ten. At km 39 Andrea Mifsud attacked on a short rise and Clément Berthet followed; Mifsud crashed on the descent soon after, and the Frenchman was left alone in front with about fifteen seconds.
At km 55, leaving Marostica, nineteen riders went clear. Polti VisitMalta, Bardiani and Solution Tech chased for a long time, but on the first Rosina the bunch split. Andrea Vendrame and Anthon Charmig attacked, Filippo Turconi bridged to the Dane and Vendrame was left in no man’s land.
Twenty riders up front with all the favourites
Twenty riders crested the Rosina with 1’07” on the rest. Almost everyone who mattered was there: McNulty, Sivakov and Benoît Cosnefroy for UAE, Marc Hirschi, Scaroni, Diego Ulissi, Filippo Baroncini, Quinten Hermans, Berthet, Charmig and Turconi.
From then on the bunch never came back. The lead grew to 1’25” and then to 2’, and the race was played out among those twenty. On the second Tisa McNulty pushed for the first time; Baroncini and Sivakov led over the top, and the group split and came back together several times.
McNulty and Charmig go 50 km from the finish
The move at km 108
At km 108, about 50 km from Bassano, McNulty accelerated and only Charmig could follow. At km 110 they had half a minute on the other seventeen. On the fourth Tisa it was 32”, and the world champion kept setting the pace almost always on his own.
Behind, the ten or twelve who were left never found an agreement. Hirschi tried to hold McNulty’s wheel on one attack, Pau Martí and Scaroni pulled at times, Turconi and Jon Barrenetxea were dropped 32 km from the end. With 30 km to go the pair’s lead had grown to about a minute.
The timing was no accident. Three passages of the Tisa and the Diesel Farm were still to come, and McNulty had two teammates behind him, Sivakov and Cosnefroy: any organised chase would have had a UAE jersey ready to break it up.
The chasers split
With 26 km to go Sivakov, Berthet and Hermans jumped clear, a trio in which the Groupama-FDJ United Frenchman was on his second breakaway of the day. Sivakov, with his leader up front, had no reason to work. Scaroni tried to catch them and for a few kilometres almost did.
On the last Tisa, 20 km from the finish, the crowd was as thick as ever. McNulty and Charmig went over together with about a minute and a quarter. Cosnefroy tried to chase the pair alone, getting to 45”; on the Diesel Farm Sivakov’s trio caught and dropped him. Ulissi had lost contact with his group 18 km out.
On the Diesel Farm the world champion goes solo
The gravel 10 km from the end
The Diesel Farm began 10.6 km from the finish, and McNulty attacked straight away. Charmig did not respond. At the end of the gravel the American had 17”, 20” on the descent, with Sivakov’s trio almost two minutes back. Some twenty kilometres together had ended in a few hundred metres.
Charmig paid for the kilometres spent sharing turns with a stronger climber. On 1.3 km of double-digit gradient, with dirt under the wheels, staying on the wheel was no longer possible.
From there the gap kept growing: 29” approaching Contrà Soarda, 50” at the top of the last ramp, 54” in the final kilometres towards Bassano. Over the 10.6 km of his solo McNulty gained about six seconds per kilometre on a rider who had shared the whole move with him.
Sivakov completes the UAE podium
Behind, Sivakov left Berthet and Hermans in the finale and took third place: two UAE riders on the podium and three in the top ten, with Cosnefroy tenth.
The final average is 44.7 km/h, just below the fastest of the organiser’s three schedules, the one at 45 km/h. For three hours the race went faster than that. The bunch finished about 4’ down, after spending almost the whole afternoon watching the break from a distance. Of the 141 starters, 66 finished: at the end of the season, six times up the Tisa takes its toll.
The first world champion on the Veneto Classic roll of honour
Before McNulty no reigning world champion had won here. The recent roll of honour is made of very different riders: Marc Hirschi in 2022, Davide Formolo in 2023, Magnus Cort in 2024, Sakarias Koller Løland in 2025. For UAE it is the third win, after Hirschi and Formolo.
For McNulty it is his second win of 2026, after the Worlds, and the twenty-fourth of his professional career. The Veneto Classic was his last road race of the season: he closed the year winning in the jersey he had won.
Charmig was second for the second time in four days: on Wednesday he finished behind Alessandro Covi at the Giro del Veneto, in Vicenza. This time the Uno-X Mobility Dane raced on the attack all afternoon.
The Italians: Scaroni sixth, Ulissi ninth
With 44 km to go there were five Italians in the break: Baroncini, Scaroni, Ulissi, Matteo Scalco and Turconi. Two finished in the top ten. Scaroni, second favourite on the eve, could not hold McNulty’s wheel when he went with Charmig and ended his season sixth.
Ulissi, ninth, ends 2026 without a win. Baroncini, who had led over the second Tisa, finished fourteenth. Turconi, the 21-year-old from Bardiani, was up front with Charmig on the Rosina and in the break until 32 km from the end, and is fifteenth: useful points for a team chasing a place at the 2027 Giro.
Further back, Milesi was twenty-first, Germani twenty-second and Velasco twenty-fourth. The last Italian to win the Veneto Classic is still Formolo, in 2023.
The fagIAno receipt
The fagIAno, with its probabilities frozen before the start, at 22:30 on 17 October, gave McNulty 28.1%, top of its list; Charmig, second at the finish, was on 5.0%, fourth.
The finishing order
| # | Rider | Team | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brandon McNulty | UAE Team Emirates XRG | 3h32’57” |
| 2 | Anthon Charmig | Uno-X Mobility | +1’06” |
| 3 | Pavel Sivakov | UAE Team Emirates XRG | +1’32” |
| 4 | Clément Berthet | Groupama-FDJ United | +1’53” |
| 5 | Marc Hirschi | Tudor Pro Cycling Team | +2’02” |
| 6 | Christian Scaroni | XDS Astana Team | +2’09” |
| 7 | Quinten Hermans | Pinarello-Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team | +2’10” |
| 8 | Marcel Camprubí | Pinarello-Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team | +2’20” |
| 9 | Diego Ulissi | XDS Astana Team | +2’20” |
| 10 | Benoît Cosnefroy | UAE Team Emirates XRG | +2’20” |
| 11 | Pau Martí | NSN | +2’28” |
| 12 | Brieuc Rolland | Groupama-FDJ United | +2’50” |
| 13 | Finlay Pickering | Team Jayco AlUla | +3’23” |
| 14 | Filippo Baroncini | UAE Team Emirates XRG | +3’26” |
| 15 | Filippo Turconi | Bardiani CSF 7 Saber | +3’38” |
The preview, with the route and the favourites: Veneto Classic 2026 preview. The race page: Veneto Classic 2026.
Sources
- Route, climbs and schedules: PP Sport Events, official technical guide of the 2026 Veneto Classic.
- Finishing order and times: official commissaires’ classification (Timing by EvoData).
- Photo: SprintCycling.
Written with the help of Mnemosyne.