You might be forgiven for thinking we had rewound twelve months and were on the home straight to the 2025 WTCS Final. After all, the same players are involved, with Matthew Hauser, Vasco Vilaca and Miguel Hidalgo all pushing to make up the overall podium once more. Hauser, again, comes into the Final on the back of his worst showing of the season. And Vilaca is still trying to figure out a way to beat his Australian rival.

Yet for all the similarities to 2025, this year’s Final has crucial differences, from Vilaca arriving with the lead, Ricardo Batista’s emergence as a bona fide podium contender, the resurgence of Olympic champion Alex Yee, and memories of 2023 haunting some and potentially inspiring the in-form Dorian Coninx. Read on to find out the top stories from the men’s start lists before all the action kicks off next week.

The crunch

Something has got to give. The Series leader meets the one man he just cannot seem to beat. The world champion faces the reality of being firmly on the ropes. Memories of disappointment crash against last year’s joy of gold. As such, when Vasco Vilaca (POR) and Matthew Hauser (AUS) meet in Pontevedra, this will be more than a race. This could be the defining moment in their rivalry and indeed their careers.

Vilaca, who races for Portugal alongside Ricardo Batista, João Nuno Batista and Miguel Tiago Silva, has two WTCS wins to Hauser’s three in 2026. On the two occasions the pair have crossed paths, the Australian came out on top. Vilaca’s record at WTCS Finals also does not make for pretty reading.

He placed 23^rd at his first outing in 2022, then 15^th in 2023 when a shot at the world title went begging. 2024 saw him slip to 24^th while in 2025 he managed 5^th place in one of only two times he missed the podium all season. Vilaca therefore has to get two monkeys off his back: one called Matt and one called Finals.

Meanwhile, Hauser, who starts with Luke Willian and Callum McClusky for the Australians, placed 5^th in his first Final in 2022, 8^th in 2023, suffered a DNF in 2024 and then won in style in Wollongong last year. He has a lot of ground to make up; he will need Vilaca to finish 6^th while he wins in Pontevedra. But of the two, he has the crucial experience of making it happen. One way or another, something has got to give.

Here comes Hayden

Hayden Wilde (NZL), one of only three men in the field to have tasted victory at a WTCS Final, returns to the fold after a stop-start year. After winning the 2024 Final with panache – he is the only man to have won a Final by over a minute – he could hog the spotlight from the world title hopefuls.

Like Vilaca, the T100 world champion also has a ghost to exorcise in Pontevedra. Wilde had an even better shot at the 2023 world title but missed out after a day of mishaps, including a penalty for dropping his cap before T1 that proved costly. As the winner of WTCS Abu Dhabi in 2025, he is the one of two men to have defeated Hauser and Vilaca in the same race. The other is Miguel Hidalgo, the winner of WTCS Alghero in 2025, who starts alone for Brazil.

Wilde is also joined on the New Zealand team by Tayler Reid, who scored a WTCS personal best in the breakaway with his teammate at the 2024 Final, while Dylan McCullough makes a long-awaited return to Series after World Cup success earlier this summer.

Mislawchuk momentum

Until the end of August, Charles Paquet was the Canadian athlete most would have reasonably backed to upstage a few big names in Pontevedra. Having claimed a maiden WTCS medal earlier this year, Paquet has been in the form of his life with three top-5 finishes in the Series. But then, Tyler Mislawchuk (CAN) rolled back the clock with an outstanding medal of his own at WTCS Weihai.

Mislawchuk has also had a great summer on the World Cup circuit and will hope to parlay his momentum into one final set of fireworks for 2026. The challenge of being Canada’s top man in Pontevedra is much broader than just Paquet and Mislawchuk, though.

Martin Sobey has had an immensely promising campaign, placing 7^th in both Yokohama and Karlovy Vary. World Cup medallist Mathis Beaulieu is another on the cusp of a breakthrough on the WTCS level. Suddenly, Team Canada is enviably deep and, with eyes on the ongoing race to LA 2028, whoever comes out on top in Pontevedra could land an important psychological blow.

Memories of 2023

We have, of course, been here before. Now, as in 2023, Dorian Coninx (FRA) comes into the Final ranked 5^th in the standings; although then he had a 511-point deficit to the Series leader, Alex Yee (GBR), whereas this year he is 832 points behind Vilaca. Having summoned a miracle once on the streets of Pontevedra, who would bet against Coninx, already a two-time race winner this year, doing it again? Tom Richard, Tom Lerno, Yanis Seguin and Jules Rethoret join Coninx on the French team.

Similarly, Tim Hellwig (GER) will hope to match (or better) the silver medal he won in Pontevedra three years ago. After a 5^th place finish in Karlovy Vary, his best result since, he is trending in the right direction. Benedikt Bettin and Justus Töpper are slated to join Hellwig on the German team, as is Henry Graf, although the latter’s injury troubles may preclude him from starting.  

Conversely, Yee has memories of a world title slipping away to expunge. While Coninx rose from 5^th to 1^st three years ago, Yee made the opposite journey from 1^st to 5^th. He rallied in a big way in 2024, claiming the Olympic and world titles. However a WTCS Final win still eludes him. He has nonetheless reestablished himself as the best runner in the field this year, and with such speed he will always be in with a shot of victory. World U23 champion Oliver Conway steps up to his first Series Final on the British team alongside Connor Bentley, Jack Willis and Max Stapley.

The story of the 2020s

Plenty of other teams warrant mentions, such as Hungary who field WTCS London medallist Csongor Lehmann, Gergely Kiss and a Márk Dévay fresh off a WTCS personal best in Karlovy Vary. Spain and Italy likewise will put forward the silver and bronze medallist, respectively, from last year’s Final, David Cantero del Campo and Alessio Crociani. The former will start for the home team alongside Alberto Gonzalez Garcia, Roberto Sanchez Mantecon, Antonio Serrat Seoane and Sergio Baxter Cabrera while the latter is joined by Nicola Azzano and Euan De Nigro. What also deserves investigation, though, is how the men’s WTCS Finals of this decade have unfolded.

Several details stand out. As with Cassandre Beaugrand in the women’s Series, Alex Yee has led going into three Finals but converted that into one world title; in 2021 and 2023 he led and missed out but stopped that unfortunate run in 2024. In fact, Yee’s 2024 win and Hauser’s 2025 win reversed a three-year trend of the world champions overtaking the Series leader at the Final.

In 2021, Kristian Blummenfelt reeled in a 39-point gap to Yee. In 2022, Leo Bergere closed down a whopping 359 points to beat Wilde. And, as already noted above, in 2023 Coninx overturned a scarcely believable 511 points to deny Yee. The points differentials involved in 2026 suggest that this year’s world title should be a straight shoot out between Vilaca and Hauser (Batista is over 750 points behind his teammate in 3^rd), but the lesson of recent WTCS history is that nothing can be taken for granted.

View the full start lists here and be sure to tune in to the men’s Final on TriathlonLive (at TriathlonLive.io) on Sunday 27^th September with the action set to start at 18:00 (CEST).