Nine rounds was already enough to produce a full season of grumbling. South Korea, then back to Europe, then Utah, then New York, then do it again next year. A draft 2027 calendar leaked by the Italian outlet PianetaMTB, corroborated independently by Pinkbike, Brújula Bike, and RyanMTB’s Substack, suggests the UCI heard the complaints and responded by adding more races, not fewer. The proposed UCI Mountain Bike World Series would expand to 12 XCO/XCC rounds and 10 downhill rounds for 2027, both up from nine apiece this past season, with most of those stops grouped together in Europe instead of bouncing the field across oceans and back every few weeks.

That’s the headline. It’s not the whole story. Even PianetaMTB’s own framing of the leak wasn’t celebratory — their headline translates roughly to “crazy draft calendar, breaks almost gone.” Cramming three more rounds into roughly the same six-month window doesn’t just fix a travel problem. It creates a different one.

Quick Take

What leaked	Draft 2027 UCI MTB World Series calendar
Source	PianetaMTB, corroborated by Pinkbike, Brújula Bike, and RyanMTB
XCO/XCC rounds	12 (up from 9 in 2026)
DH rounds	10 (up from 9 in 2026)
Season window	Mid-April to early October, mostly in Europe
Soldier Hollow	Tipped for a return slot, believed penultimate round
Rumored addition	First-ever XCO World Cup round in Spain or Portugal
UCI confirmation	None yet — calendar remains unofficial
Best for	Anyone tracking 2027 travel plans or season-ticket budgets around World Cup racing
Skip if	You need a confirmed, final schedule — this is still a leak, not an announcement

What’s Actually in the Leaked Document

The draft making the rounds this week isn’t a UCI press release with a logo on it. It’s a schedule grid, reportedly circulated among national federations and teams before anyone official was ready to talk about it, and it’s the kind of document that leaks precisely because so many people need to see it months before a season starts — team managers booking flights, venues locking in dates, sponsors planning activation budgets. Escape Collective’s own look at the leak notes the proposal first started circulating back in May, and as of October there’s still no confirmed calendar — a WBD spokesperson told them an announcement was coming “soon,” which is the sentence every leaked-calendar story ends on until it isn’t.

Here’s what the draft actually shows, per the outlets that have reviewed it:

• Nine of the twelve XCO/XCC rounds would run in Europe, with the remaining three outside the continent — a ratio Brújula Bike reported directly from the leaked document.
• The season opens with back-to-back European rounds in mid-April and closes in early October, with most of the DH calendar layered into the same European stretch rather than tacked on separately.
• Round spacing tightens considerably in the European block — the “breaks almost gone” detail PianetaMTB flagged in its own headline.

None of that is confirmed. All of it is specific enough, and corroborated across enough independently reporting outlets, that it’s worth taking seriously as a draft — just not as a finished schedule.

The Travel Problem This Is Actually Solving

We’ve covered how spread out the 2026 calendar got — a season that opened overseas, routed through Europe’s usual rotation, then closed with back-to-back North American stops at Whistler and Lake Placid. Riders have been vocal for seasons about what that kind of routing does to a body: jet lag stacked on top of race fatigue, gear shipped across time zones, recovery weeks eaten up by travel instead of training. Grouping nine of twelve XCO rounds in Europe is a direct answer to that complaint, not a vague gesture toward it.

It’s also, bluntly, cheaper for the UCI and its broadcast partner to run. Fewer long-haul logistics for officials, timing crews, and course-build teams means fewer line items, even before you get to what it saves individual teams on freight and flights. The travel complaint and the budget complaint point in the same direction here, which is probably why this draft exists at all.

How Many Rounds Would the 2027 UCI MTB World Series Have?

1. 12 XCO/XCC rounds, up from 9 in the 2026 season — the headline number in every outlet’s coverage of the leak.
2. 10 downhill rounds, also up from 9 in 2026, with several rounds combining XCO and DH on the same weekend rather than running as standalone stops.
3. A season window from mid-April to early October, roughly six months, compared to a similarly bookended but less densely packed 2026 calendar.
4. Nine of the twelve XCO rounds in Europe, with three rounds outside the continent — a sharp shift toward geographic clustering compared to prior seasons’ wider spread.
5. No official confirmation from the UCI as of this leak — every number above is sourced to the draft document, not a published schedule.

Soldier Hollow’s Tipped Return

Soldier Hollow, Utah hosted its first-ever UCI World Cup round in September 2026, a short-track and cross-country double weekend in Midway that went to Martina Berta on both days while Trek and Scott used the same venue to debut dueling 32-inch wheel prototypes. One World Cup weekend doesn’t usually guarantee a venue a return slot — plenty of first-time hosts get a single look and nothing after. Soldier Hollow is reportedly different. Pinkbike’s coverage of the leak has it pegged as the penultimate round of the proposed 2027 XCO calendar, the stop right before the season finale — the same kind of late-season billing Whistler got in 2026 before Lake Placid closed things out.

If that holds, it says something about how the venue performed in its debut: altitude, course design, and infrastructure good enough on the first try that the UCI isn’t treating it as a one-off experiment.

A First-Ever Spain or Portugal XCO Round

The part of the leak that’s generated the most speculation isn’t the round count. It’s where some of those rounds might land. PianetaMTB’s reporting, relayed through Brújula Bike, points to Portugal as a possible season-opening venue. Separately — and this is a distinct story from the leaked calendar itself — Brújula Bike has also reported that Spain’s Royal Cycling Federation, broadcast partner Warner Bros. Discovery, and promoter Ocisport are in discussions to bring a World Cup round to Spain in 2027.

Neither is confirmed. Both would be firsts for Olympic cross-country racing at this level in their respective countries, and both fit the broader pattern in this draft: push more of the calendar into countries with established road and cyclocross infrastructure, rather than keep spreading rounds to new continents every season the way recent calendars have.

Lake Placid’s Exit Changes the North American Math

There’s a second story here that isn’t technically part of the leaked calendar but shapes how the non-European slots might get filled. Lake Placid hosted the 2026 DH World Cup finale, where Asa Vermette clinched the overall downhill title — the first American to do it since Aaron Gwin in 2017. Separately, RyanMTB reported in July 2026 that the Olympic Regional Development Authority decided not to renew its UCI World Cup contract after this year, following disputes over how the Whiteface downhill track was built. ORDA’s board chair left the door open to a future return, but for 2027 specifically, that’s one fewer confirmed North American venue heading into a season that — per the leaked draft — still wants three rounds outside Europe.

Put those two stories together and Soldier Hollow’s reported penultimate slot looks less like a coincidence and more like a venue stepping into a gap. Whether Whistler gets a second DH date or another North American venue fills the remaining non-European rounds is exactly the kind of detail a draft document doesn’t settle.

Who Should Care About This

Anyone planning travel around 2027 World Cup racing. A calendar clustered in Europe changes the math on flights, team-camp logistics, and which rounds are realistic to attend in person if you’re not already based there.

Fans following the Soldier Hollow and Lake Placid storylines. One venue reportedly gaining a return date, another losing its contract — the North American rotation for 2027 is genuinely unsettled, and this leak is the first real signal of how it might shake out.

Anyone who followed this season’s travel complaints. The grouping in this draft is a direct response to the back-and-forth routing that defined the 2026 calendar. Whether it actually works — denser scheduling has its own costs — is a separate question.

Who Should Skip This

Anyone booking non-refundable travel off a leak. Nothing here is official. PianetaMTB’s document is a draft, not a published calendar, and the UCI hasn’t confirmed a single date.

Readers wanting exact venue names for every round. Several of the three non-European XCO stops and most DH venues weren’t specified in what’s leaked so far — this is a shape, not a finished map.

The Bottom Line

A draft 2027 UCI Mountain Bike World Series calendar, leaked by PianetaMTB and corroborated by Pinkbike, Brújula Bike, and RyanMTB, proposes 12 XCO/XCC rounds and 10 downhill rounds — both up from nine in 2026 — running mid-April through early October and grouped mostly in Europe to cut the transatlantic travel riders have complained about for seasons. Soldier Hollow is tipped for a return slot as the penultimate round, a first-ever XCO stop in Spain or Portugal is rumored, and Lake Placid’s decision not to renew its contract leaves an open question about which North American venues round out the schedule. None of it is confirmed. All of it is specific enough to plan around cautiously — emphasis on cautiously — until the UCI actually publishes something with its own name on it.

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Reporting sourced from PianetaMTB, Pinkbike, Brújula Bike, Escape Collective, and RyanMTB’s Substack. The UCI has not officially confirmed this calendar at time of publication.