After making it clear that MTN-Qhubeka, soon to be known as Team Dimension Data in 2016, would be willing to step up to the WorldTour if the UCI asked them, have now revealed they have a meeting with the UCI’s licensing commission later this month.

“They have asked us to come to a licencing hearing on the 17th of this month,” Team Principal Douglas Ryder confirmed to CyclingTips on Friday. “I guess the next step is they will want to have a discussion around the team, our structure and everything like that.”

There are 17 WorldTour teams for 2016 and the UCI’s preferred quota is 18 teams, meaning they are likely to ask another team to step up. In 2014, they asked IAM Pro Cycling to step up and become the 17th team in cycling’s top flight after Europcar dropped down a level and Cannondale and Garmin merged.

Speaking to CyclingTips at the UCI headquarters this week, UCI president Brian Cookson said that the team is the logical choice to fill that slot.

“The situation now is that we have 17 teams that have applied,” he said. “Under the rules we have the capacity of inviting another team to join if they are capable of fulfilling the criteria. That is something that we are looking at at the moment with that team. I am hopeful, but that process is with the Licence Commission now and not with me.”

Ryder was keen to empahsise that nothing is a done deal, with the possibility that other teams have also been invited to see the Licensing Commission, not just Dimension Data.

“There is nothing definite, they haven’t given us any guarantees or anything like that,” he said. “I also don’t know if there are other teams who have also been invited to the Licence Commission. It could be others as well – maybe the new Europcar, they were wanting to go. Perhaps they are also being brought in.”