Each year we try and showcase a small collection of events which we think are worthy of your attention. The Gravel Union Recommended events have been chosen by us to represent the full gamut of gravel and bikepacking events and festivals. This year’s collection features everything from a weeklong gravel festival on a sun-kissed Mediterranean island to “champagne’ gravel riding in Scandinavia to a winter exploration of little-known natural parks in Catalunya.

When there are so many great gravel events available to you as a gravel rider, how do you narrow down your selection? Some practical filtering by date/location/type of event would be an obvious starting place, but we can also help with our selection of Gravel Union Recommended Events for 2024. 

You might well ask what criteria did we use when selecting events for our shortlist for this year? We narrowed down our choices using the following wish list:

• A variety of locations across Europe
• Different months of the year from February to November
• Range of event styles – single day, weekend, festivals, races, non-competitive and bikepacking
• Appeal to as wide a range of riders as possible
• A mix of well-known and up-and-coming events
• All event organisers agree to comply with our Events Charter

There is no payment for event organisers who wish to be included on the list and we don’t receive anything in return. The only stipulation is that each event that gets selected has to offer at least one free place to Gravel Union members, which we will give away via a digital raffle. For every event, we’re going to go behind the scenes and chat with the organisers to find out what’s special about their events. We will showcase each of the chosen events with an individual story and will be running them all over the next couple of months.

So, without further ado, here’s our chosen events for 2024:

• 16-18/2/2024 - Santa Vall, Girona, Spain - https://www.santavall.com/en/
• 30/3/2024 - Ronde van de Wijnstraat 2024, Worms, Germany - https://gravelunion.cc/article/ronde-van-de-wijnstraat-2024
• 14-21/4/2024 - Bedrock Gravel Festival, Cyprus - https://www.activatecyprus.com/gravelfest-cyprus
• 4/5/2024 - Empire Lands gravel bike adventure, Silvi, Italy - https://raceacrossitaly.com/ultracycling-empire-lands-gravel/?lang=en
• 14-16/6/2024 - Nature is Bike gravel festival, France - https://natureisbike.com/en/gravel-spirit
• 27/7/2024 - Glorious Gravel Galloway Forest Gravel Epic, UK - https://gloriousgravel.com/product/gravel-sportives/galloway-forest-gravel-epic/
• 23-24/8/2024 - Nordic Gravel Series, Bergslagen, Sweden - https://nordicgravel.com/collections/bergslagen-12-08-23
• 7-8/9/2024 - Gravel Blinduro, Czechia - https://www.facebook.com/gravel.blinduro
• 6/10/2024 - Pathfinder Giro, The Netherlands - https://www.facebook.com/pathfindergiro/
• 9/11/2024 - MM Gravelgrinder Winter Edition, Catalunya, Spain - https://www.mmgravelgrinder.com/