João Almeida

João Almeida is a Portuguese road cyclist who rides for UAE Team Emirates XRG. He was born on 5 August 1998 in Caldas da Rainha, a small coastal city in Portugal. According to his team, he played football and swam before taking up cycling. He turned professional in 2017 with the Italian team Unieuro Trevigiani–Hemus 1896, then rode two seasons for the American development team Hagens Berman Axeon.

He moved to the WorldTour with Deceuninck–Quick-Step in 2020. At his first Grand Tour, the 2020 Giro d’Italia, he wore the pink jersey for 15 days in a row, from stage 4 to stage 18, and finished fourth overall, the best result by a Portuguese rider at the race at that time. He was sixth at the 2021 Giro, became Portuguese time trial champion, and won the Tour de Pologne and the Tour de Luxembourg that year.

Almeida joined UAE Team Emirates in 2022. He was fourth at that year’s Giro when a positive COVID-19 test forced him out after stage 17, and he won the Portuguese road race title. In 2023 he finished third at the Giro, with a stage win and the young rider classification: the first Grand Tour podium by a Portuguese rider since Joaquim Agostinho in 1979. In 2024 he rode the Tour de France in support of Tadej Pogačar and finished fourth overall. In 2025 he won the Itzulia Basque Country, the Tour de Romandie and the Tour de Suisse, left the Tour de France after a crash on stage 7 in which he fractured ribs, and finished second at the Vuelta a España, with a stage win on the Angliru.

His 2026 season was interrupted. He was second at the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana and third at the Volta ao Algarve, but after the Volta a Catalunya an illness and abnormal blood test results made him miss the Giro d’Italia and take a two-month break. He did not ride the Tour de France, left the Tour de Pologne after a crash, and finished 91st at the Vuelta a España, where he was third in the stage 18 time trial.