The final round of the Lloyds National Circuit Series comes down to an asymmetric fight: Callum Laborde, who has raced the entire series as Ornata Factory Racing’s sole entrant, defending a 12-point lead against reigning champion Tom Armstrong and a four-rider Wheelbase CabTech Castelli squad. The stage is a Sheffield circuit redrawn for 2026, which sends the peloton up the granite setts it used to descend. And there are Rapha Super-League points on the line too, with Sheffield taking Cambridge Criterium’s place for 2026.
The women’s race carries a stranger tension. Meg Barker (Rapha Cycling Club) leads the series but will not start, her season now pointed at the Commonwealth Games track programme, and Madeline Cooper, third overall, is also absent. That leaves Isabel Mayes (O’Shea Red Chilli Bikes)—20 points down—as the rider best placed to take the title on the night.
Here is our preview.
What is it?
The Sheffield Grand Prix is one of Britain’s liveliest mid-week criteriums, a barrier-lined city-centre loop in the heart of the Steel City, free to watch, raced under a midweek summer evening’s fading light. The 2026 edition, on Wednesday 22 July, is the twelfth running: the final round of both the open and women’s Lloyds National Circuit Series, and a Rapha Super-League round with added weight this year—following the cancellation of the Cambridge Criterium, Sheffield takes on its classification, worth 27 points to each winner.
The race’s roll of honour runs from Dean Downing and Helen Wyman through Tom Pidcock and Katie Archibald to last year’s winners, Anna Morris and Matt Bostock. Neither returns to defend: Morris is not entered, and Bostock, now at Rapha Cycling Club after leaving TEKKERZ CC over the winter, has come off the provisional startlist. The open race incorporates the Doug Bond Challenge Trophy, and both National A races carry equal £2,000 prize funds, with £400 to each winner.
The evening is promoted by Sheffrec Cycling Club and Generation Pro Cycling Events, with Marc Etches as race director, and builds through youth races and a support race before the two National Circuit Series finales under the lights.
The route
The circuit is not new so much as turned around: the established Sheffield loop, raced in reverse for 2026, with the start/finish moved from Union Street to Pinstone Street outside the Town Hall. Each lap of just over 1.4 kilometres sweeps through the Peace Gardens and past Browns on Union Street, then opens up along Arundel Gate before turning back into the city’s tight core: along Norfolk Street past the Crucible Theatre, up the Surrey Street cobbles, and onto the front of the Town Hall to complete the lap.
That reversal matters. Run the other way, the course fired riders down eighty metres of granite setts; this year it asks them to climb the cobbles late in the lap, with the finish following almost immediately. Expect the front of the race to be fought for on Arundel Gate, and the sting delivered on Surrey Street.
As usual, gridding follows the series regulations: national circuit race champion first, then the previous winner of the event, the series leader, the sprints leader, and the top 20 of the standings.
What’s at stake
The Rapha Super-League. Armstrong leads the open competition on 125, 25 ahead of Ollie Wood (Rapha Cycling Club), with Laborde third. Yeoman leads the women’s table by 15 from Barker—who, absent here, cannot respond before returning later in the season. Sheffield inherits Cambridge’s classification, worth 27 points to the winner, with the North Yorkshire Grand Prix on 16 August the finale.
The open National Circuit Series. Laborde leads on 196 points, 12 clear of Armstrong, after third place at Dawlish behind Frank Longstaff. Fifty points go to Wednesday’s winner, so Armstrong must outscore Laborde by 13 to overturn the deficit outright and defend his 2025 title—a 12-point swing would force a countback of wins. Ollie Wood retains a mathematical route of his own—victory, with Laborde 12th or lower and Armstrong no better than sixth—while the path for Aaron King (Wheelbase CabTech Castelli) requires Laborde to finish outside the points almost entirely.
The women’s National Circuit Series. Barker leads on 184 with Mayes on 164, but Barker’s Dawlish win was, by her own account, her final circuit series appearance of the season before the Commonwealth Games. With Cooper and Amelia Cebak also absent, Mayes is the highest-placed contender on the startlist, needing 21 points—20th place or better—to overhaul Barker. She is not quite alone in the hunt, though: Mari Porton (Handsling Alba Development Road Team), 44 points back, can still take the title with a podium finish—a win if Mayes finishes 16th or lower, second with Mayes 18th or lower, or third with Mayes outside the top 19. Only 14th place or better guarantees Mayes the title whatever Porton does; if it ends in a tie, the title would be decided on a countback of wins.
The sprint competitions. Laborde’s Dawlish double moved him to 54 points, 12 ahead of Daniel Barnes (Wold Top Pactimo). With a maximum of 20 available across Wednesday’s two sprints, Barnes needs a near-sweep while Laborde scores little. In the women’s competition, Mayes’s 30-point lead over Morven Yeoman is larger than the points remaining—the title is mathematically hers already.
The teams. Wheelbase CabTech Castelli lead the open National Circuit Series team standings, closing on 500 points, while Handsling Alba Development Road Team hold a commanding lead in the women’s competition despite Cooper’s recent absences. Both team titles, plus the winning team on the night, are presented from the podium truck at 21:35.
Riders to watch
Schwalbe Women’s Grand Prix
Isabel Mayes (O’Shea Red Chilli Bikes) arrives with the sprint competition all but sealed and the overall title within reach. Fifth at Dawlish after winning both intermediate sprints, she has been the series’ most consistent accumulator of points in its second half, and with Barker, Cooper, and Cebak all absent, the equation is simple: score well enough on Wednesday and the Lloyds National Circuit Series is hers.
Morven Yeoman (DAS–Hutchinson) has a different prize in view. The Rapha Super-League leader missed Dawlish through illness and was a doubt for South Molton, but she is on the startlist here—and with Barker away on track duty, a strong night would put real distance into the women’s League. Seventh at Sheffield last year amid DAS–Hutchinson’s dominant 2025, she starts alongside Katie Scott and Aoife O’Brien, with Lucy Lee and Ellie Parry coming off the earlier provisional list.
Mari Porton (Handsling Alba Development Road Team) was fourth at Dawlish and sixth here last summer, and, with Amelia Tyler a late withdrawal, leads a two-rider Alba entry alongside Arianne Holland—though the team title is already mathematically won. Without Cooper, Porton is their card for the win—and more besides: a podium on Wednesday, with Mayes far enough back, would make her champion.
Kim Baptista (DRAFT) has quietly become one of the circuit series’ animators: sixth at Dawlish, second in both sprints there, and newly arrived in the Rapha Super-League’s top ten. Jenny Holl (Loughborough Lightning) knows this race well—runner-up in 2024 and the rider who forced the decisive pace a year ago—and heads a six-rider Lightning entry, the largest squad in the field. Maddie Heywood, tenth here last year, gives them a second option.
Xan Crees (OGT p/b USE) was the most persistent attacker at Dawlish and brings the bike handling of a British cyclo-cross champion to the setts.
And a nod to Monica Greenwood (Macclesfield Wheelers), who won the women’s National Circuit Series round here in 2023 in DAS Handsling colours and returns as a privateer, and to Erin Avill (Simpson Nouvelles), a Sheffield Grand Prix youth winner back in 2019.
Grasscrete Open Grand Prix
Callum Laborde (Ornata Factory Racing) topped last year’s Sheffield preview as an outside challenger; twelve months on he leads the National Circuit Series outright, and has done it alone. Third at Dawlish from the winning break, winner of both intermediate sprints there, he holds a 12-point advantage in the series and a similar cushion in the sprint competition. He will again be the only Ornata rider in the race, surrounded by squads with numbers to burn.
Tom Armstrong (Wheelbase CabTech Castelli) is the man most likely to take it from him. The defending series champion is in the richest vein of his career—wins at Guildford and Lancaster this month, second at Dawlish—and leads the Rapha Super-League by 25 points. He starts with Aaron King, Dexter Leeming-Sykes, and Robert Smart, and a team title to seal into the bargain.
Ollie Wood (Rapha Cycling Club) carries his team’s hopes alone. Matt Bostock’s late withdrawal deprives the race of its defending champion and Wood of a sprint card, but the 2019 Sheffield winner has been racing with intent regardless—second in the Super-League, 25 points behind Armstrong, the Rapha Lincoln Grand Prix victor spent Dawlish attacking the race rather than following it. Without a sprinter to ride for, expect more of the same.
Frank Longstaff (DAS Richardsons) has momentum banked: winner at Dawlish on Friday with a long, planned sprint from the break, twelve months after Bostock beat him by a wheel on The Strand, he sits fifth in the series despite missing two rounds. Sixth here last summer, he starts with Cai Davies, Matthew Lord, and Olivier Mangham, making DAS Richardsons a four-rider threat.
Caleb Pain (Ride Revolution Coaching) completed the Dawlish break in fourth and is the sharp end of the biggest entry in the race: eight Ride Revolution riders, including Guildford animators Gabriel Dellar and Josh Housley. Expect them to make the race hard early.
Alex Beldon (Laval Cyclisme 53) is the wildcard. Second here last year in Muc-Off–SRCT–Storck colours before his move to France, he returns to a course he nearly conquered—though the finale he mastered now runs the other way.
JAKROO Handsling Racing start five, led by Will Truelove, a fixture of the front group at this race in recent seasons, and Sam Chaplin, prominent in the Dawlish chase. Alec Briggs (TEKKERZ CC), fourth here last year and a crit racer to his bones, will relish the new cobbled approach. Daniel Barnes (Wold Top Pactimo) needs a big night in the intermediate sprints to trouble Laborde’s other lead. And Thomas Mein (Hope Factory Racing) adds cyclocross pedigree; he was in the lead move at the Nocturne this year and is tailor-made for the fast aggressive racing that the Sheffield circuit promotes.
Timings
The Cocker & Carr Youth Races open the evening at 17:55, followed by the JE James Cycles Classic support race at 18:35. The Schwalbe Women’s Grand Prix starts at 19:25 and the Grasscrete Open Grand Prix at 20:30, both raced over 50 minutes. National Series podium presentations begin at 21:35 on Pinstone Street.
How to follow
The racing is free to watch from the barriers anywhere on the circuit, with the start/finish outside the Town Hall and the pits on Fargate. There is no live stream this time, but Monument Cycling TV will be hosting a watch party on the night. The British Continental will bring updates from Sheffield on our Instagram through the evening, with a full report and results after the racing.
Weather
At the time of writing, Wednesday looks dry and mild: a daytime high of around 21°C, only a small chance of rain, and temperatures easing through the evening races. Dry setts, in other words—though a city-centre criterium needs only one shower to change character entirely.
