While the road racing season got underway Down Under in early January, many consider the true start of the season Opening Weekend in Belgium with the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne Classics on 1st and 2nd March.
Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne’s route is slightly flatter than Omloop making it more of a sprinters’ race – evident from its honour roll, which includes Mark Cavendish, Dylan Groenewegen and Fabio Jakobsen in recent years. Unlike Omloop there is no women’s race.
Last year Wout van Aert won in what was a second consecutive victory for the Visma-Lease a Bike team after Tiesj Benoot in 2023. Van Aert won the three-up sprint ahead of breakaway companions Tim Wellens and Oier Lazkano and it proved to be the Belgian’s only Classics victory in 2024.
Unsurprisingly Belgium has enjoyed the most success here, winning 54 editions. It’s then a big gap to the Netherlands, which sits in second place with ten wins. Tom Boonen holds the most wins individually with three.
A UCI ProSeries race rather than top-level WorldTour, it still attracts a high calibre of riders, with Van Aert, Matej Mohorič, Biniam Girmay, Jonathan Milan and Tim Merlier among the riders on the start list for 2025. A junior version of the race has run since 2000, producing such illustrious winners as Geraint Thomas (2003) and Remco Evenepoel (2018).
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Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne 2025: Key information
- Date: Sunday 2nd March 2025
- Start: Kortrijk, Flanders
- Finish: Kuurne, Flanders
- Distance: 196.9km
- UK television coverage: TNT Sports
- Most wins: Three – Tom Boonen
- 2024 winner: Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike)
Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne 2025: The route
Starting in Kortrijk, the 7km neutralised start meanders briefly through Kuurne before the racing proper begins near Harelbeke, home of the E3 Saxo Classic. The Tiegemberg is the first climb to be scaled, 17.5km into the race, before Volkegemberg, which includes some cobbles, and then Boembeek just after the 50km mark.
The 13 hellingen (hills) are short, the longest being La Houppe at 1.8km. It used to be Lepelstraat at 2.1km but this has been removed for Boembeek (1.1km) instead in 2025. The toughest section is likely to be as the race reaches the halfway point as it takes on three sharp climbs in quick succession: the Hameu des Papin reaches a gradient of 16.2%, followed not even 10km later by another punchy climb at Le Bourliquet (1.3km, max 15.3%) and Mont Saint-Laurent another 5km later which hits extremes of 17%.
The final climb of Kluisberg reaches a max 11% gradient and comes 59km from the finish, giving the riders a long, flattish run in to the final sprint.
Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne 2025: Favourites
Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike) returns alongside fellow 2024 podium makers Oier Lazkano (now at Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) and Tim Wellens (UAE Team Emirates XRG), all who could realistically be in the mix again. The race comes one day after many are racing Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, including the aforementioned three.
There's also Matej Mohorič (Bahrain Victorious) who finished third here in 2023 and Belgium's Road Race Champion Arnaud De Lie (Lotto) who thrives in home races, looking to pick up his second win of the season and biggest one-day win since Tro-Bro Leon in 2024.
Cyclist's ratings
- ★★★★★: Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike)
- ★★★★: Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck), Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek), Tim Merlier (Soudal-QuickStep)
- ★★★: Jan Tratnik (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), Biniam Girmay (Intermarché-Wanty), Tim Wellens (UAE Team Emirates)
- ★★: Nils Politt (UAE Team Emirates XRG), Jhonathan Narváez (UAE Team Emirates XRG), Jordi Meeus (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe)
- ★: Tiesj Benoot (Visma-Lease a Bike), Alexander Krisoff (Uno-X Mobility), Oier Lazkano (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), Matej Mohorič (Bahrain Victorious), Kasper Asgreen (EF Education-EasyPost)
Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne 2025: How to watch
This will be one of the first races to be impacted by the closure of Eurosport in the UK. Viewers can subscribe to TNT Sports with cycling now part of a wider package that includes Premier League football, Premiership rugby, Moto GP and more for £30.99 a month, but there are ways to subscribe for less.
Elsewhere, Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne will be on Max and FloBikes in the USA, FloBikes in Canada, and Staylive for much of the rest of the world.
Racing starts at 12:05 local time and will finish at 17:00, with the UK and Ireland coverage on TNT Sports 2 from 13:30-16:30 GMT.
If it’s not being shown in your country, you may be able to watch coverage using a VPN – Virtual Private Network – which allows users to mask their IP address and watch geo-blocked content, provided they don’t need to pay for a subscription. This is also helpful for watching paid-for coverage while travelling abroad in countries without access. Find out which countries have free to watch cycling coverage here.
One such example is ExpressVPN, which is very well reviewed, helps users to find free-to-watch cycling, and costs start from around £5 per month. Besides ExpressVPN, other options include NordVPN, Surfshark and Kaspersky.
Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne 2025: Start lists
Data powered by FirstCycling.com
