Unfortunatly, two races in the iXS European Downhill Cup and iXS Downhill Cup series have had to be postponed. Maribor has been moved to the end of September and will now be the final race in the series, while Ilmenau, including the VPACE Kids Cup, has been rescheduled for a week later.

Creating the race calendar is a real feat of strength every year. The process takes many months. The prerequisite for planning is always the publication of the World Cup calendar, which unfortunately has been getting later and later in recent years, meaning that we are also late in assigning the dates. With the four different race series (the iXS series plus the Rookies Cup and VPACE Kids Cup) and the iXS International Rookies Championships, we have a total of 28 races, some of which are interdependent and, logically, need to be well spaced out in terms of scheduling. In addition, many venues and national associations have preferences that need to be taken into account. Unfortunately, it is often the case that almost everything is ready and virtually every weekend is planned, but then some venue, for whatever reason, is unable to host on that date. And so everything gets postponed again. But in the end, it all works out somehow and the official race calendar is published in December. Unfortunately, however, that is not the end of it for the 2026 season, as there are once again problems with two dates.

In the iXS European Downhill Cup, this affects Maribor. Unfortunately, the European Championships have been moved from their original date to the date of the Slovenian stop. The UCI rules do not allow such a scheduling conflict, as both races attract a similar field of participants. We therefore had to find a solution and, due to the full calendar, were only able to choose the date at the end of September. This means that the final will not be held in Verbier as planned, but two weeks later in Maribor.

The second postponement concerns Ilmenau. Unfortunately, every year there is a very large festival on the local mountain opposite, which can be reached via the same road. This festival has been brought forward by a week from its usual date, so that it now coincides with the originally planned race date. Unfortunately, for infrastructural reasons (e.g. road closures), it is not possible to hold both events at the same time. The race will now be postponed by one week. This also affects the VPACE Kids Cup race, which must therefore also be rescheduled.

Race dates

Fortunately, we were able to resolve both postponements before the start of series registration on Sunday, 1 February 2026. We apologise for any inconvenience caused; we would also have preferred to stick to our original race calendar.

Racement