“There isn’t a route in the world where Tadej Pogacar wouldn’t start as favourite” – Are discussions over the 2026 Tour de France parcours overblown?

The debate began the moment Christian Prudhomme left the stage in Paris. Too few time-trial kilometres, too much backloading, too many climbs packed into the final weekend — but as The Gruppetto host Rob Hatch put it bluntly during TNT Sports’ route-reveal special, “there isn’t a route in the world where Tadej Pogacar wouldn’t start as favourite.”

It’s a fair point. The newly unveiled 2026 Tour de France route seems designed for suspense rather than surprise, with organisers clearly hoping to keep the GC battle alive deep into week three. But whether the Slovenian superstar rides the race at all — and whether anyone can challenge him if he does — feels a far more decisive question than any debate about gradients or summit finishes.

The men’s Tour will start in Barcelona with a team time trial — the first since 1971 — using an experimental format that times each rider individually rather than by the fourth across the line. Hatch described it simply as “a long lead-out effort” for the GC riders.

From Catalonia to the Pyrenees, the first week looks relatively restrained: familiar climbs like the Aspen–Tourmalet pairing and a summit finish at Gavarnie-Gèdre, but little that should cause chaos. “Expect time differences,” Hatch noted, “but probably nothing huge just yet — the organisers want to keep it close.”

Week two carries the race through Bordeaux, the Massif Central, and on to Loudon for the Bastille Day stage, before steep finales at Plateau de Solaison and Vaujany hint at tougher terrain ahead. The real drama, though, will come in the Alps.

As Eurosport reporter Louis Pierre Frileux added to Hatch's analysis from the presentation hall, the race’s defining moments will likely come very late: “The Pyrenees are not really hard — it becomes harder and harder as the Tour goes on, with three mountain stages to finish in Orcières-Merlette, Alpe d’Huez, and Alpe d’Huez again on stage 20. It will be spectacular.”

That closing double-header is savage by any standard. Stage 19 brings back the 21 famous hairpins, while Stage 20 serves up 5,600 metres of elevation over the Télégraphe, Galibier, and Croix de Fer before the peloton climbs Alpe d’Huez once more via the back road last used in the Dauphiné. “Really brutal,” said Frileux. “The day before Paris — unbelievable.”

Add in a 26-kilometre Lake Geneva time trial, and the pattern becomes clear: short on TT mileage, long on climbing spectacle, and deliberately designed to stay open until the final weekend.

As Hatch summed up, “If we’re honest, there isn’t a route in the world where Tadej Pogacar wouldn’t start as favourite — though Remco Evenepoel might have preferred more time-trial kilometres. Perhaps that’ll tempt him towards the Giro instead.”

With Jonas Vingegaard and Joao Almeida also well suited to the high-mountain crescendo, the 2026 Tour could once again hinge on who dares to attack deepest into the Alps. For the organisers, keeping the suspense alive until the final 48 hours might just be the biggest victory of all.