During his professional career, Urán has taken fifteen victories, including stage wins at each of the three Grand Tours, and won a silver medal in the road race at the 2012 Olympic Games.

[6][7] Urán was first introduced to the world of cycling at the age of 14 by his father, who was assassinated a few months later by one of the country's paramilitary terrorist groups.

[8][9] Rigoberto had to work as a lottery-ticket seller to help his family and at the age of 16 he turned professional and moved to Medellín to ride for Orgullo Paisa, a Colombian cycling team.

The following year he signed for Unibet.com and won a time trial at the Euskal Bizikleta that was stopped with some riders still left to go due to heavy rainfall and strong winds.

He also won the eighth stage of the Tour de Suisse, getting away from a bunch of approximately 55 riders with 800 metres (2,600 ft) to go and holding onto the lead.

At the 2007 Deutschland Tour he was in a breakaway with eventual stage winner Damiano Cunego when he flew down over a mountain stream and smashed into a retaining wall.

[13] In 2008 he signed a contract with Caisse d'Epargne and went on to finish second at the Volta a Catalunya and third at the Giro di Lombardia, a prestigious one-day classic.

At the Giro d'Italia he won the young rider classification and finished seventh overall after being in the lead group for most of the mountain stages.

Approximately 200 metres from the arrival, and with the victory secured for one of the two men, Urán looked back, unwisely over his left shoulder (since Vinokourov was on his right) to see if the chasers were approaching to threaten their lead.

[25] Later in the fall, competing in the Italian Classic Gran Piemonte, Urán attacked in the final climb of the day, followed by Gorka Verdugo (Euskaltel–Euskadi).

[26] A couple of days later, he grabbed the third place in the Monument of cycling Giro di Lombardia in difficult weather conditions (cold and rain).

He crossed the line in Lecco as part of a small group of chasers who unsuccessfully tried to reel in Joaquim Rodríguez of the Team Katusha squad.

However, on Stage 7, Urán was forced to wait for Wiggins after he struggled then crashed on wet descents, and dropped out of the top ten as a result.

After the individual time trial on Stage 8, Urán sat tenth overall, 2 minutes and 49 seconds behind new leader Vincenzo Nibali.

Wiggins withdrew due to illness after losing further time on Stage 12, leaving Urán as Sky's leader.

On the final summit finish on Stage 20, Urán came third behind Nibali and Fabio Duarte to leapfrog Evans into second place.

After a nice start sitting 3rd overall, Urán slipped in the overall classification of the Vuelta a España, dropping out of contention as he suffered from asthmatic bronchitis.

[30] In 2015, after a strong season start with a 3rd overall in Tirreno–Adriatico and 5th overall in Volta a Catalunya and Tour de Romandie, he had a quiet Giro, finishing in 14th position.

[32] Approaching the final week, Urán was 4th in the general classification, only 29 seconds behind race leader Chris Froome (Team Sky).

At the Tour de France, Urán led the EF Pro Cycling team where he was joined by compatriots Daniel Martínez and Sergio Higuita.

He progressed up to third overall ahead of the second rest day,[43] after Romain Bardet, Guillaume Martin and Egan Bernal all lost time in the mountains.

On stage 17, Urán lost at least 39 seconds to all his general classification rivals – and around 2 minutes at most – after cracking in the last 4 kilometres (2.5 miles) of the ascent of the Col de la Loze; he dropped from third to sixth overall as a result.

[55] Urán extended his stay with the team beyond the end of 2022,[56] and in 2023, recorded top-ten overall finishes at the Volta a Catalunya (tenth) and the Tour de Suisse (sixth).