The UCI's nutrition guidelines for cycling, a position statement led by Louise Burke and published online on 15 September 2026, scale carbohydrate on the bike to ride length, 30 to 60 g an hour for 1 to 2.5 hours and 90 g an hour beyond. Amateurs can use the same scale for the hours they ride.
What are the UCI nutrition guidelines?
They are the summary of the UCI Sports Nutrition Project, which the UCI set up to turn nutrition research into recommendations for every discipline it governs. A steering committee drew on 54 researchers, their work appeared as 14 topic reviews, and the position statement condenses them into 10 themes, from race preparation and fuelling on the bike to energy availability, supplements, and age and sex. It appeared in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, endorsed by the contributing authors and the UCI's representative, Xavier Bigard.
The statement is written for elite racing, and the authors say so. They add that the advice may also have relevance to the millions of cyclists who race at lower levels, and that is the reading this series takes. Each later part covers one of the reviews behind it.
How many carbs per hour does the UCI recommend?
It depends on how long you ride, and the scale is the most useful page in the whole statement for a club rider.
| Situation | UCI recommendation |
|---|---|
| Race of 40 to 75 minutes | Rinse the mouth with a carbohydrate drink, if practical |
| Race of 1 to 2.5 hours | 30 to 60 g of carbohydrate an hour |
| Race of more than 2.5 hours | 90 g of carbohydrate an hour |
| 120 g an hour or more | Noted in professionals, benefit not yet validated |
| Meal 1 to 4 hours before | 1 to 4 g of carbohydrate per kg of body weight |
| Carbohydrate loading | 10 to 12 g per kg a day for 1 to 2 days |
| Fluid on the bike | Keep net loss under 2% of body weight |
| Daily carbs, moderate training under 3 hours a day | 6 to 10 g per kg |
| Daily protein | 1.6 to 2.1 g per kg, spread across the day |
| Energy availability | About 40 to 45 kcal per kg of fat-free mass a day |
Above 60 g an hour, the statement says riders should use sports products that mix glucose and fructose, because the two sugars are absorbed through different routes in the gut. It also recommends training the gut, building up the amount you take in on long training rides towards your race target, because tolerance improves with practice. The authors flag 120 g an hour and higher as a professional practice whose benefit still needs testing, which matches what we found in our look at 100 g of carbs per hour.
The project's road cycling review, by Asker Jeukendrup and colleagues, shows how far professional practice has moved. Reported on-bike intakes rose from about 30 to 60 g an hour before 2010 to 90 g, and in some races 120 g or more, and a 2019 study of Vuelta a España riders measured an average of 91 g an hour. Their total daily carbohydrate stayed about the same, around 13 g per kg, so the riders moved fuel onto the bike rather than eating more.
How much should a cyclist eat in a day?
The daily carbohydrate ranges follow the training, not the rider. The statement gives 5 to 7 g per kg for light endurance training, 6 to 10 g for moderate endurance training of under 3 hours a day, more than 8 g for intensified blocks of over 4 hours a day, and 10 to 25 g for stage racing and races of over 6 hours. A 70 kg rider doing an hour a day on the turbo probably sits at the light end, about 350 to 490 g of carbohydrate across the day, while the same rider in a week of long winter base rides moves up.
Protein sits at 1.6 to 2.1 g per kg a day, towards the top of that range in hard blocks or when a rider is trying to lose weight, in line with our protein guide. Fat fills about 20 to 35% of energy. The statement also describes eating fewer carbohydrates around some easy sessions to sharpen the training signal, and warns that the performance evidence for it is still limited and that it must not cost the quality of key sessions.
Weight, energy and supplements
The authors want riders to treat body weight as a measure to watch, not a goal, and to plan ranges across the season rather than hold a race weight all year. They describe cyclists as a group at high risk of low energy availability, eating too little for the training, and they name "the lighter the better" as an outdated belief. If you suspect you are under-eating, the statement points to screening and expert support, so talk to a doctor or a registered dietitian.
On supplements, the project kept to a short list with a strong evidence base. For road cycling, its table marks beta-alanine, caffeine and glycerol as having strong evidence, and creatine, beetroot juice nitrate and sodium bicarbonate as needing more road-specific evidence. For gravel, only caffeine gets a tick. Exogenous ketones are not recommended in any discipline. The authors add that much of the supplement research comes from lower-calibre male riders, and that riders who are never drug tested should still use only batch-tested products, because contamination with banned substances happens. Our caffeine and sodium bicarbonate posts go into dose and timing.
What does this mean for an amateur rider?
Our view at WattPlan is that the scale by duration is what most amateurs should take from the statement, because it fits the way they ride. A 60 minute turbo session needs no more than a drink, a 2 hour club run wants 30 to 60 g an hour, and a 4 or 5 hour sportive wants 90 g an hour that you have practised on long training rides first. Most of the rest, the stage-race intakes, altitude iron and weigh-ins, belongs to riders with a team behind them.
In WattPlan's workout player, feed reminders run on structured workouts of 60 minutes or more and on free rides. Each one comes every 45 minutes and asks for 60 g of carbohydrate with 500 ml of fluid, about 80 g an hour. That rate doesn't change with the length of the ride, so it sits above the UCI's 30 to 60 g band for a 90 minute session and below its 90 g for a long ride. Treat the reminder as a cue to eat and set the amount from the scale.
What to do with the guidelines
- Before your next long ride, look up its length on the scale and write down a carbohydrate target per hour.
- On rides over 2.5 hours, build towards 90 g an hour over several weeks, using a glucose and fructose product above 60 g.
- Check your daily carbohydrate against the range for your training hours, not against a fixed diet.
- Weigh yourself before and after a long ride, and aim to finish less than 2% lighter.
- Before buying a supplement, check the UCI table for your discipline and choose a batch-tested product.
What we don't know yet
The statement summarises evidence gathered mostly in trained and elite riders, many of them men, so amateur intakes are an extrapolation. The authors call for more research on very high carbohydrate rates, on supplements in female and world-class riders, and on whether low-carbohydrate training improves performance as well as training signals. This post covers the summary only. Later parts of the series read each chapter in full.
Sources
- UCI Sports Nutrition Project: Position Statement on Nutrition for Cycling, International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism
- UCI Sports Nutrition Project: Race Nutrition for Road Cycling, International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism
- Nutrition in Cycling, Union Cycliste Internationale