DISCUSSION | 2026 Tour de France route: The good, the bad, Pogacar and his rivals

The Tour de France route has been revealed and it has provided for a lot of debate. The CyclingUpToDate team has taken a look at the route and some of our writers have shared their opinion on the 2026 edition and the climbs that await the riders, as well the how it fits Tadej Pogacar, Jonas Vingegaard, Remco Evenepoel and more.

You can see all of the route details that are known so far in our profile analysis, which will be developed over the coming months as race organizers make stage profiles fully available. Nevertheless, all of the key details of the race are known.

Ultimately it's a route I can't complain about. Although I really disliked this year's traditional course when it comes to the copy paste mountain stages over and over again, the flat and hilly start delivered a lot of tension, explosive stages and small gaps until we reached the mountains.

It shows there's both positives and negatives to take from trying to make a route too traditional or too modern. Looking at the 2026 course I see a bit of the same but this time around with a route focused on the 'modern Tour'... A lot of short mountain stages and just short stages all around (only 1 day above 200 kilometers!), 1 individual time trial that is just a day for the GC men and where the specialists can't really do anything about it, and the overly hard start where only on stage 5 do the sprinters have a real chance of going for a regular bunch sprint. Sometimes it wouldn't hard to balance things out quite a bit, but the Grand Tour organizers more and more go for the extreme.

But honestly I would give this route a nice 7/8 out of 10. There is 1 high mountain stage in the first 13 days which means the gaps won't open much, stage 3 should be an exciting sprinter/puncheur/GC men sprint and stage 4 allows for a yellow-jersey changing breakaway... And the mountain stages are good, stage 14 is a proper high mountain day in the Vosges, stage 15 has the steep climbs challenge with the brutal Plateau de Solaison finally in the Tour... And although I was sceptical about the double Alpe d'Huez, I have to say they did a great job with it.

Stage 19 is an Alpe d'Huez W/Kg test, the stage is very short and not too hard until it's base, and we should have records being beaten there on the most iconic climb of all in the Tour. But stage 20 is what takes it home, as finally there were some balls in designing a final mountain stage that is harder than all others, has longer climbs, higher altitude and a finale that is being used for the first time in the Tour's history, climbing the Alpe d'Huez from the Col de Sarenne side, after going up the Croix de Fer and the Col du Galibier through it's hardest side beforehand. Having such a crazy hard stage at the very end keeps the tension alive, and the 'what if' always present, whether it's in the fight for the yellow jersey or minor places. It's a different challenge and the day everyone is most likely to crack, which is a great choice.

My fear is between stages 7-13 there will be almost no action or anything to show. But the organizers have added double intermediate sprints to the flat stages which include most of those, so I'm (perhaps naively) hopeful that we may see more action on breakaways because of that.

The route suits Tadej Pogacar but well, you actually can't avoid that literally. He will always be the man to beat. Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel certainly will aim for the Giro, specially if we see more time trialing there as Evenepoel will not like this Tour route at all, he can't use it.

Mathieu van der Poel is certain to skip and favour mountain biking instead or a more relaxed summer, anyhow it's a route where you're either a sprinter or a pure climber if you want to succeed, there's not much inbetween.

The first question I have after seeing the profile of the stages of the 2026 Tour de France is whether Remco Evenepoel will ride the Tour. Another pertinent question will be whether Vingegaard and Visma will maintain their aspirations to ride the Giro d'Italia if they want to fight Tadej Pogacar, who will certainly be aiming for his fifth title.

The Tour de France will not be a walk in the park, with six stages for sprinters, six or seven mountain finishes, only one individual time trial, which is not for pure specialists and only appears in the third week of the race, just after the second rest day.

Once again, the focus of the race is on the south-central and south-eastern parts of the country, with the peloton's northernmost foray in the last stage to the Champs-Élysées, which will include the cobbled streets of Montmartre. There are two climbs, one of which is a tough one in the last stage, to Alpe d'Huez, with more than 5000 metres of accumulated elevation gain. I can say that the design is well conceived, with stages to suit all tastes, and plenty of spectacle is guaranteed on French soil next July.

To be honest, the route for the 2026 Tour de France has left me rather cold. Perhaps it's because the 2025 season ended on such a high note, but I'm not entirely convinced by the new changes.

What bothers me the most is the destruction of the time trials. Every year they become less important in the Grand Tours, and in the 2026 Tour the situation is even worse. There will only be one individual time trial, which will not even reach 30 kilometers. And the inaugural team time trial will not make much difference either.

I feel that they have wanted to refocus the battle on Pogacar and Vingegaard, and no one else. With so few kilometres of time trials, Remco Evenepoel can surely not be considered a contender for victory in the general classification. If they had done it right, the Belgian, who is by far the best in the world in time trials, could have put his two rivals in serious trouble.

In addition to the above, I feel that the passage through the Pyrenees in this edition will be anecdotal, unimportant in the fight for the general classification, and very wasted.

Finally, to point out some positive aspects, I like that they have once again opted for the final stage with Montmartre. The 2025 spectacle was one of the best of the edition with the victory of Wout van Aert, and with Pogacar wanting to fight for the stage victory despite already having the overall victory in the bag. Things like that always add to the spectacle. In addition, there are some very interesting medium mountain stages that are sure to offer incredible battles to win from the breakaway. In conclusion, I would give this Tour de France route a score of 6 out of 10.

Regarding the first week. I am not a fan of the TTT but i understand due to commercial reasons you have to fit in more racing in Barcelona so this is probably the way to get 2 days fitting inside Barcelona. I'd rather have a prologue instead though, I feel like this will impact GC too much for any sprinter to be able to take the yellow. And if stage 1 doesn't do it, then stage 2 will.

Apart from that, also not a fan of high mountain stage on the first week. Again, there will not be those random riders taking yellow and getting their 15 minutes of fame if you're setting terrain for the climbers. Maybe, maybe, stages 3 and 4 could provide ground for some breaks. Secondly, there are exactly 5 stages that will be absolute snooze fests. I thought the organizers have learnt the lesson from these past few years. Pure flat stage with no mountain points and barely any uphill terrain will result in several stages without breakaways.

We've been having 2-3 of those each year in the Tour, next year we have 5!! Stages 5, 7, 8, 11 and 13 you can just turn on the TV on the last 10km and you probably won't be missing any action. Stages 9 and 12, that's how you make a good sprint finish stage. Could easily replace 1 or 2 of these stages for individual time trials instead. Speaking of time trials, apart from the stage 1 TTT we only get one more time trial and it is relatively short and hilly. I'm sure there's a certain TT world champion who is not going to like this. Plus this will probably not be interesting for the likes of Ganna, Tarling and other pure TT specialists either.

In terms of GC fight, looks like we have those time trials and 5 mountain stages with highlights for the double day on Alpe D'Huez. I like that the queen stage was left for stage 20, so maybe if things are tight on GC we may have a decisive day in here, but without enough time trial this course will certainly suit better the pure climbers instead. I'd rebook the stage 6 to a later part of the race but I'm ok with it. I suppose there would be no better fitting for the Pyrenees stages.

To finish it up, there's some stages for classics specialists to shine, those certainly interest me. The Montjuic circuit is always interesting to see. Stage 10 is quite well built as well. Stage 17 definitely is a breakaway day in the middle of the GC stages and it appears stage 21 will feature only one ascent to the Montmartre circuit but even then it should be quite a show, I definitely prefer the Paris finish with the Montmartre circuit so i am looking forward to that!   

Overall not my favourite course. Positives: The Montjuic circuit, Tourmalet appearing on a more decisive phase on stage 6, stages 19 and 20 will be great. Negatives: Not enough TT, too many pure flat sprint stages in poor timing, no chance for sprinters to take yellow, no cobbles... Basically a race where we will see a bunch of pure sprinters and climbers. I wouldn't be surprised if a guy like Mathieu van der Poel skipped the Tour and even Remco Evenepoel should probably focus on Giro/Vuelta instead.