Four routes to the Tour de France: Pogacar, Vingegaard, Evenepoel and Seixas take contrasting paths to Barcelona showdown

The road to the 2026 Tour de France is narrowing fast, and the biggest names in the peloton are now entering the final phase of preparation before Barcelona hosts one of the most anticipated Grand Departs in recent memory.

The 113th edition of the Tour begins on 4 July with a team time trial in the Catalan capital, immediately giving the GC teams a reason to arrive fully switched on. For Tadej Pogacar, Jonas Vingegaard, Remco Evenepoel and Paul Seixas, the countdown now carries four very different meanings.

Pogacar arrives as the sport’s dominant figure after a near-perfect spring. Vingegaard arrives after adding the Giro d’Italia to his Tour de France and Vuelta a Espana titles. Evenepoel arrives after a deliberately quiet build-up designed around freshness rather than race rhythm. Seixas arrives as the French teenager whose 2026 season has already pushed him well beyond ordinary debutant status.

The Tour has often been framed around a single duel in recent years, but this summer could have more layers. Pogacar and Vingegaard remain the central rivalry. Evenepoel is the elite outsider with the time trial weaponry to unsettle the balance. Seixas is the unknown, not yet proven over three weeks, but already too good to be treated as a simple development story.

Pogacar’s season has already bordered on absurd. Before even reaching the final Tour build-up, the Slovenian had won Strade Bianche, Milano-Sanremo, the Tour of Flanders and Liege-Bastogne-Liege, while also finishing second at Paris-Roubaix.

That classics campaign alone would define most riders’ careers. For Pogacar, it has become the platform for another Tour de France title defence. His wider status is beyond dispute. He is already a four-time Tour winner, a Giro d’Italia champion, a world road race champion and one of the greatest one-day riders of his generation. The question for July is whether anyone can make him pay for the sheer scale of his spring campaign.

UAE Team Emirates - XRG will again head to the Tour with the strongest individual rider in the race. Pogacar’s form has never been the issue. The challenge will be controlling Vingegaard, Evenepoel and the wider GC field across a route that gives climbers and time triallists repeated chances to strike.

Vingegaard’s Giro d’Italia victory has changed the mood around his 2026 season. The Dane did not simply win in Italy. He won with authority, taking the maglia rosa, five stage victories and the Trofeo Senza Fine before turning his attention straight back to July.

After the Giro, Vingegaard made it clear that the turnaround would be short. “I will stay a few days in Rome with my family and we will enjoy some time together. Then I will return to Denmark to begin my preparation for the Tour de France, because it will come very quickly,” he said after stepping down from the podium in the Eternal City.

That is the trade-off now. Vingegaard has the strongest Grand Tour evidence of anyone bar Pogacar, and he remains the only rider in this field who has repeatedly beaten the Slovenian at the Tour. Yet the Giro-Tour double is still a brutal assignment.

His pre-Giro programme was lean and ruthless. He won Paris-Nice and the Volta a Catalunya, then carried that level into Italy. Team Visma | Lease a Bike now have to turn a dominant Giro into a Tour challenge without dulling the edge that made him so dangerous in the first place.

Evenepoel’s Tour preparation has followed a very different logic. The Belgian will not race again before Barcelona, leaving him with a long block away from competition after a busy start to his first season with Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe.

His 2026 has still produced major signals. Evenepoel opened the year with victories in Mallorca, won the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana, took the UAE Tour time trial, finished fifth overall at the Volta a Catalunya, won Amstel Gold Race and reached the podium at both the Tour of Flanders and Liege-Bastogne-Liege.

The race days have added up, though. Red Bull’s answer has been to remove him from the June calendar and build towards the Tour through training, altitude work and controlled preparation.

For Evenepoel, the Tour remains the race that can reshape his Grand Tour reputation. His time trial ability is a genuine threat to Pogacar and Vingegaard, especially with both team and individual time trials on the route. The unresolved question is still the mountains. He can win time against almost anyone against the clock. July will decide whether he can defend it deep into the final week.

Seixas is the rider who changes the tone of the preview. He is not arriving with the Grand Tour proof of Pogacar, Vingegaard or Evenepoel, and treating him as their equal would be premature. Ignoring him would now look just as foolish.

The 19-year-old Decathlon CMA CGM Team rider has already won Itzulia Basque Country, La Fleche Wallonne and Faun Ardeche Classic in 2026. He has also finished second at Strade Bianche and Liege-Bastogne-Liege, both times behind Pogacar, and was runner-up to Juan Ayuso at the Volta ao Algarve.

That is not normal pre-Tour noise. Seixas has already gone into races that should have been above his pay grade and left with results that place him close to the very top of the sport.

Before his final preparatory race, the Tour Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes, Seixas also reconned key Pyrenean terrain with Decathlon teammates Nicolas Prodhomme and Matthew Riccitello, including the demanding sixth stage of the Tour route over the Col d’Aspin and Tourmalet.

His Tour debut should still be judged carefully. Three weeks are different from one-day races and one-week stage races. But Seixas has already earned a different kind of pressure. He is no longer just the future of French cycling. He is already part of the present.

Pogacar goes to Barcelona as the rider everyone else must solve. Vingegaard arrives as the one man with proven Tour answers against him. Evenepoel brings a controlled build, a huge engine and the clearest time trial threat. Seixas brings the uncertainty that makes this Tour feel bigger than another Pogacar-Vingegaard chapter.

The hierarchy remains clear. Pogacar and Vingegaard are the two names around which the Tour will be built. Evenepoel sits just behind them, dangerous enough to punish any hesitation. Seixas is the wildcard, protected by inexperience but exposed by his own results.

Barcelona will hand out the first yellow jersey through the team time trial. The real sorting process will last three weeks.