Israel Premier Tech will compete in the 2023 Tour de France despite its demotion from the World Tour.

The 18 WorldTour teams will be automatically invited to all WorldTour races, with the two top-ranked professional teams also receiving invitations starting in 2022.

The race organizer, the Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), has prepared two wild cards for the teams they choose to complete the 22-team peloton.

Despite Euskaltel Euskadi's interest in the Grand Depart in the Basque Country, Israel Premier Tech and Uno X were announced as the final teams to hit the starting line on Wednesday.

Israel Premier Tech had faced uncertainty about its future in the sport after being demoted from the WorldTour, with team boss Sylvain Adams suing the UCI and even threatening to close the team.

Unlike Lotto Doustney, who was also relegated after three years in the ranking cycle, they had not earned enough UCI points to earn an automatic invitation to the Grand Tour in 2022.

However, Israel Premier Tech's race program for 2023 was strengthened without much damage: the UCI ranking system had already given them access to WorldTour one-day races, but the UCI made a last-minute U-turn and rule change and gave them invitations to WorldTour stage races other than the Grand Tours.

Now they will not miss the Tour de France, the most important race for sponsor visibility. The Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta a España are the only two blank races on the World Tour calendar, and Israel Premier Tech is hoping to at least compete in the former.

The team has made a strong impact in the 2022 Tour de France, with two stage wins by Simon Clark and Ugo Ure, and four-time overall winner Chris Froome, who showed his former brilliance in the Alpe d'Huez stage.

"I am looking forward to racing in July in the most important and difficult race in the sport, the Tour de France," Adams said.

Israel - Premier Tech was one of only six teams to win at least two stages of last year's race and will be looking for more success in the 2023 edition. We are looking forward to what promises to be a dangerous and powerful race, and we hope to bring the joy of victory to our many fans around the world, especially in Israel."

For Uno X, the invitation to the 2023 Tour de France is an important step in the Norwegian team's steady growth.

The team, run by Jens Haugland, has been making an impact in recent years, competing in increasingly big races, with a philosophy of nurturing Scandinavian talent.

After making their presence felt in the Classics in 2021, the team competed in a series of ASO races in 2022, including the Criterium du Dauphiné and Liège-Bastogne-Liège. They have a veteran star in Alexander Kristoff, a new signing, and an up-and-comer in Tobias Halland Johannessen.

"I am very proud, humbled and grateful for this invitation. The Tour de France is the ultimate dream and just being able to participate in it is a victory for the team," Haugland said.

"We will prepare well for this year's competition. One of our long-term goals is to be able to compete at the top of the Tour de France in the future. There is no reason to think that is impossible."

Euskaltel-Euskadi missed out on the last two wild cards despite racing in his home town.

The Basque team made its mark on Tour de France history from the 1990s until 2013, when the team was forced to disband. Theory was promoted to a professional team in 2020 and competed in the Vuelta a España in 2021 and 2022.

They hoped to qualify for the Tour de France at the Grande Pearl in the Basque Country in northern Spain, but Uno-X was higher in the rankings, as was the Tour de France Femmes women's team.

Another team was B&B Hotels, which had signed Mark Cavendish and was almost certain to compete as an invited rider. This team was closed due to a sponsorship crisis, and Cavendish has not yet decided to move to Astana Kazakstan.