Gravellata is back for a sixth year with 3T. Here's how they got here and the custom 2026 colourways that close the circle.
There's a moment in every long story when you look back and realise that what felt like a series of random choices was actually a path. For Luca and Andrea, brothers, illustrators and creatives behind 2BROS Creative and the voice of Gravellata, that moment came in 2026, six years after buying their first gravel bike without knowing what it would come to mean.
This year their project carries a simple, direct payoff: Who Are You. A question they've been asking themselves for six seasons, ride after ride and one they can finally answer.
From mountain bike to first gravel bike
Before Gravellata, before the idea of telling cycling stories through digital content, Luca and Andrea raced. Ten years in the Elite mountain bike category, marathons and granfondos, training plans and race calendars.
Their first gravel bikes, bought in late 2018, weren't a project; they were curiosity. A way to complement MTB training, to take a longer ride through the summer months, to breathe after months of competition. It didn't take long for that curiosity to become something bigger. In 2020, the idea came together: combine the bike with their work as illustrators and graphic designers and the project to tell cycling stories through a visual language, build a project around a bike that had already won them over.
It was July 2020 when they met Carlo and 3T...The start of a story that's still being written.
The evolution of a tyre, the evolution of an idea
Longtime Gravellata followers know this part of the story well, but it's worth telling in full, because it's the heart of everything they've become.
It starts with a Racemax, first generation with 35mm tyre clearance, with 38mm real wide already pushing the limits of a 700c rim. A fast, efficient gravel bike, built for towpaths and white roads. But Luca and Andrea grew up among mountains and trails, and the question they asked themselves early on was simple: can this bike take us there too?
The answer came in stages. In 2022-2023, the jump to 650b wheels on the same Racemax, to run 50-55mm tyres. In 2023, the launch of the first Ultra alongside 3T on the island of Kos, Greece and wide tyres again. Then two seasons, 2024 and 2025, on the Extrema Italia which, in their own words, embodied the spirit of their gravel adventures better than any bike before it.
There's a conviction Gravellata has stood behind since 2022, often against the grain back when criticism for their "oversized" tyres was common. Wider tyres don't mean a slower, less reactive bike. They mean better efficiency on dirt. Four years later, aero frames and 50mm tyres line up at the start of the biggest gravel races in the world.
Gravellata saw it coming.
2026: two bikes, two ways to ride gravel
This year, the answer to "Who Are You" takes the shape of two bikes, not one because Luca and Andrea have realised their gravel isn't a single thing.
There's the gravel of extreme adventure, bikepacking bags strapped to the frame, a tent in the pack, routes that flirt with mountain bike terrain. And there's the gravel of performance watching the averages, pushing the climbs, rooted in their past as racers.
That's why in 2026 Gravellata rides a Racemax² Italia and an Ultra² Italia.
Two bikes that, in their words, finally let them live both sides of their gravel. A racing bike for events like The Hills. A more adventurous one for the trails of the Alto Piano, where the rocks are the size of apples and the terrain doesn't forgive.
The 2026 custom colourways
To mark this sixth year of partnership, Luca and Andrea's Ultra² Italia arrive this year with a custom livery painted specifically for them, a design that visually tells their journey, drawn by the same brothers who have always told cycling stories through illustration.
It's no coincidence that they designed the bikes they ride. It's the same logic that has driven Gravellata from day one, merging creative work with a passion for the bike, until the two become the same thing.
Not just one thing
There's a line that sums up what Gravellata means today, six years in: "We're not just athletes, we're not bikepackers, we're not cycle tourists; we're a bit of all of these things."
It's the same philosophy that has guided 3T in building a range capable of answering different needs without ever losing its identity. A Racemax² Italia for those who want to race. An Ultra² Italia for those who want to explore. And all the rangre in between. The same conviction underneath it all: gravel was never meant to be ridden one way. It's the freedom to choose all of them.
Six years of Gravellata prove that when a partnership is built on shared values, it lasts. And it keeps growing.
Follow Gravellata at gravellata.cc and on Instagram for what's coming next in 2026.