Preview: The Gravel Earth Series Finale at The River

The Gravel Earth Series wraps its 2026 season on September 6 with a completely new finale.

The River by The Traka makes its debut in Bouillon, Belgium, sending the GES field into the Ardennes for 160 kilometers and 2,550 meters of climbing. More than 800 riders from 34 countries are expected across the event’s four distances, but it’s the 160km Queen Race where the 2026 GES titles will be decided.

After a season that has bounced across continents, race formats and just about every interpretation of the word “gravel,” it feels like an appropriately spicy place to decide a championship.

On the men’s side, Mads Würtz Schmidt arrives with one hand firmly on the trophy. The women’s race is a different story, with Gee Schreurs and Axelle Dubau-Prévot separated by just 23 points.

There’s also a little extra juice in the finale. The River is one of only two races this season, alongside The Traka 360, offering enhanced GES points. And riders must finish the race in order to be scored in the GES overall.

So, one race left. More weight than usual. Let’s get into it.

First, Meet The River

The River is the newest addition to Klassmark’s growing family of By The Traka events and takes over finale duties from Ranxo Gravel, which moved earlier in the calendar this year.

That makes this the first time in the four-year history of the Gravel Earth Series that the championship will be decided somewhere other than Spain.

And this isn’t exactly Girona 2.0.

The River offers four distances, but the GES field will tackle the 160km Queen Race, packing 2,550 meters of climbing into a route through the Belgian Ardennes.

There doesn’t appear to be one monster climb waiting to blow the race apart. Instead, the difficulty comes from accumulation: fast gravel, forest roads, repeated climbs and a course that keeps changing rhythm. Think less long, open gravel highway and more Belgian Classics country. More Liege than Leadville. Punchy climbs, accelerations and the kind of terrain that can slowly turn your legs into mashed potatoes.

One rider who should be feeling pretty comfortable with that assignment is Mads Würtz Schmidt.

The GES leader just won his second consecutive European gravel championship in Houffalize, roughly an hour from Bouillon. He rode away from the field solo to do it, in very similar terrain, just before returning to the same corner of Belgium for the biggest race of his GES season.

Pretty decent tune-up.

You Don't Just Have to Start The River. You Have to Finish It.

There are a couple of wrinkles in the Gravel Earth Series scoring system that make the finale particularly interesting.

The championship isn’t based on a simple season-long points total. Instead, each rider’s best four results count toward the final standings.

But here’s the more interesting bit: to be eligible for the final GES classification, riders must complete The River.

Not start it. Finish it.

The Life Time Grand Prix has a similar rule requiring its athletes to participate in Big Sugar to remain eligible for the overall, but participation there means starting the race. At The River, the GES wording specifically requires riders to complete it.

So, theoretically, a rider could do everything right for an entire season, show up in Belgium exactly as required, then suffer a race-ending mechanical or crash and lose their place in the final series classification altogether.

You don’t just have to show up for the final exam. You have to turn it in.

That adds a sneaky layer of jeopardy to a race where the obvious temptation for a championship leader might otherwise be to simply ride conservatively and get through the day.

The River also carries enhanced scoring, with 60 points available for the win instead of the standard 50 awarded at most GES rounds.

And there’s money on the table too, with the top 10 Pro finishers across the men’s and women’s categories sharing a €25,000 prize purse.

The Men: Mads' Championship to Lose

Mads Würtz Schmidt has been the class of the 2026 Gravel Earth Series, and the standings reflect it.

He enters The River with 210 points and a 64-point advantage over Hugo Drechou, a gap big enough that the championship math is all but done. With the best-four-results format already baked into the standings, it would take a pretty dramatic turn of events, think a race-ending crash or mechanical, to keep Mads from leaving Belgium as the 2026 GES champion.

And his form certainly isn’t suggesting a collapse is coming.

Beyond that European title in Houffalize, Würtz Schmidt has built the kind of season-long consistency that this championship format is designed to reward. His win at The Traka 360, with Drechou finishing second, helped build the lead he carries into Belgium. Now he gets a finale on terrain that appears to fit him beautifully.

Behind him, however, things are much less settled.

Drechou comes into the finale second overall with 146 points and some hardware of his own after winning the French national gravel championship. He’s spent his season bouncing between UCI Gravel World Series events and GES rounds and remains in prime position to lock down second overall.

Then there’s Tobias Mørch Kongstad, sitting third with 116 points and fresh off a victory at Core4 Iowa. Kongstad and PAS Racing have been fixtures throughout the GES season, and another big result in Belgium could move him up the final standings.

Petr Vakoč and Benjamin Perry are tied behind him at 107 points, keeping the fight for the final podium very much alive. We should probably talk about Ben Perry, but we'll save that for when we have more time.

The title may be nearly settled, but there’s still plenty to race for behind Mads.

The Women: Now This Is a Finale

If the men’s championship is about Mads finishing the job, the women’s championship has considerably more room to move.

Gee Schreurs leads the series with 194 points, with Axelle Dubau-Prévot sitting just 23 points behind at 171.

And with 60 points available for the win, that is very much not over.

Schreurs has built the stronger GES campaign and arrives at the finale holding the position everyone else wants. She’s also Dutch, making Bouillon about as friendly a trip as an international gravel series is going to give her.

Dubau-Prévot brings a French national gravel championship into the finale and has an extremely compelling reason to make the short trip across the border: the GES title is sitting right there.

The two have already gone head-to-head on one of the biggest stages of the GES season. At The Traka 360, Dubau-Prévot finished second and Schreurs third, behind Rosa Klöser.

Now the order between them matters a whole lot more.

Schreurs has points to protect. Dubau-Prévot needs to create separation. On a course built around repeated efforts rather than one obvious decisive climb, that could make for some very fun racing.

Further down the standings, the names tell an interesting story about what the Gravel Earth Series is, and what it isn’t.

Morgan Aguirre currently sits third overall with 138 points, but we’re not convinced she’ll be in Belgium. As of Wednesday, Aguirre’s social media had her training in California with Kate Courtney, which would make a trip to Bouillon for Sunday’s finale a pretty quick turnaround.

That would also fit with how Aguirre has approached the season. She’s placed priority on the Life Time Grand Prix in North America, and despite sitting third in the GES standings, this series hasn’t appeared to be the primary target of her year.

Sophie Wright sits just behind her at 128 points, with Nathalie Eklund fifth at 115, meaning an Aguirre absence could open up quite a bit of movement behind the championship battle.

Then there’s defending champion Rosa Klöser, sitting all the way down in 17th after winning four GES rounds on her way to the 2025 title.

Klöser hasn’t exactly spent 2026 trying to repeat her GES season. She’s been splitting her time between gravel, the Life Time Grand Prix and racing at the highest level of professional road cycling, with Paris-Roubaix and the Tour de France Femmes on her calendar.

Put simply, her world got bigger.

We don’t yet know whether Klöser will be at The River either. And if she isn’t, it’s hard to call that a failed title defense. A year after GES was one of the centerpieces of her season, she now has a WorldTour calendar and an LTGP campaign competing for her attention.

In some ways, that’s a pretty good advertisement for what winning this series can do.

How the Titles Get Won

For Mads, the assignment is fairly straightforward.

Finish the race.

Okay, it’s slightly more complicated than that, but not much.

A 64-point advantage with one round remaining puts Würtz Schmidt in commanding position, and the combination of his season-long results and current form makes him the overwhelming favorite to become the 2026 Gravel Earth Series champion.

The more interesting men’s math sits behind him, where one strong result could significantly rearrange the final podium.

The women’s equation is much more fun.

Twenty-three points separate Schreurs and Dubau-Prévot, and because GES only counts each rider’s best four results, simply adding whatever they score at The River to their current totals doesn’t tell the whole story. Their finale results can replace weaker scores already sitting in their four-race tally.

Translation: watch where they finish relative to each other and let somebody else deal with the spreadsheet.

Dubau-Prévot needs a big day. Schreurs needs to keep her close enough. And with 160 kilometers of Ardennes gravel deciding the whole thing, there are plenty of opportunities for that math to get weird.

And remember: both have to finish.

The Gravel Earth Series has spent 2026 bouncing from race to race, country to country and surface to increasingly questionable surface.

Now there’s one left.

A brand-new finale in Belgium. A men’s leader trying to put the bow on a dominant season and a women’s championship that can still change hands.

And whatever happens Sunday, it sounds like this may not just be the end of the 2026 GES season. It could be the end of this version of the Gravel Earth Series.

GES has been teasing some significant announcements following the finale, and we’ve heard some grumblings of our own that a partnership with a larger race organizer could be in the works. If true, that could give the series considerably more horsepower heading into its next chapter.

We’ll leave that one there for now. More on it in a separate Off Road Index story.

For this weekend, all eyes on The River.