We consider Cr (r⩾1) diffeomorphisms f defined on manifolds of dimension ⩾3 with homoclinic tangencies associated to saddles. Under generic properties, we show that if the saddle is homoclinically related to a blender then the diffeomorphism
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f
can be
Cr
approximated by diffeomorphisms with
C1
robust heterodimensional cycles. As an application, we show that the classic Simon-Asaoka's examples of diffeomorphisms with
C1
robust homoclinic tangencies also display
C1
robust heterodimensional cycles. In a second application, we consider homoclinic tangencies associated to hyperbolic sets. When the entropy of these sets is large enough we obtain