Pogacar, Seixas, Evenepoel... - The 2026 Tour de France gains shape on one Spanish mountain

The Tour de France is perhaps the most hotly contested race in professional cycling and in order to reach it with chances of taking good results, all riders need their best form. Over the past few years a new altitude camp location has become the overwhelming destination for most top riders in the peloton: Sierra Nevada. Tadej Pogacar, Paul Seixas and Remco Evenepoel are all currently in the south of Spain preparing for the Grand Boucle.

On the outskirts of Granada, Sierra Nevada provides the altitude, the good weather, the long climbs, the altitude and also good logistics which makes it an ideal location for professional riders to take up altitude camps. Mount Teide's surge in popularity has faded, and Sierra Nevada has emerged as the ultimate off-race cycling hotspot throughout the month of May.

Tadej Pogacar is present and has been training for several weeks in Sierra Nevada, and was even spotted training with former teammate Juan Ayuso. He is taking on his first pure mountain-focused training blocks of the year, after a spring where he had the classics as the absolute priorities.

The Decathlon CMA CGM Team block is en masse at Sierra Nevada with Paul Seixas at the helm. Already in January the Frenchman spent a large part of his preparation at altitude, and 12 months ago he was also part of this training camp despite not racing the Tour de France later on.

This time around, he is, and his Tour block has joined him. Nicolas Prodhomme, Aurélien Paret-Peintre and Léo Bisiaux are present; as is Matthew Riccitello who may be an addition to the team after Seixas' breakthrough this spring and his need for support in the mountains.

Cees Bol, Stefan Bissegger, Daan Hoole, Sander de Pestel, Robbe Ghys and the recovering Tiesj Benoot are also present. Whilst Olav Kooij is returning to competition, it's not expected that he will make it to the Tour lineup. Instead, the team's potential last three positions should be filled by Stefan Bissegger, Daan Hoole and either Bol or Benoot, depending on the ambitions going into the race.

Remco Evenepoel and Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe also made the trip to Spain and are preparing for an important Tour at altitude currently. Remco Evenepoel has removed all racing schedule ahead of the Tour so as to have a specific training-focused approach to the race, minimizing fatigue as well into it; whilst Florian Lipowitz will only take on the minor Tour of Slovenia as preparation where he should be the ultimate favourite.

Gianni Vermeersch, Tim van Dijke and Maxim van Gils have joined them also as certain presences at the Grand Boucle.

Wout Van Aert, Matteo Jorgenson, Edoardo Affini and Bruno Armirail are only some of the Team Visma | Lease a Bike riders present at altitude at this point. The list, assembled by Velofacts, gathers information from Strava and social media activity from the riders themselves.

The likes of Mads Pedersen, Kévin Vauquelin, Ben Healy, Julian Alaphilippe, Biniam Girmay and Tobias Johannessen are only a fraction of the professional riders that are currently undergoing their specific preparation.