From Montjuic in Barcelona to Montmartre in Paris, the 2026 Tour de France presents champion Tadej Pogacar and his rivals with a plethora of mountain passes and peaks, including two stages tackling the revered Alpe d’Huez.
The 21-day race will start in Barcelona on July 4 and cover 3,333 kilometers before finishing beneath the Arc de Triomphe in Paris on July 26, organizers revealed during an unveiling ceremony on Thursday, October 23.
This itinerary offers Pogacar’s chief rivals Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel more hope than the 2025 route did. “It’s designed to maintain the suspense until the end,” race director Christian Prudhomme said on Thursday.
The route ignores the northern part of France altogether, in complete contrast to the 2025 edition. “If you put those two races together, you’ll see we have managed to get most of France in,” said Prudhomme.
The Barcelona Grand Dรฉpart will be under intense scrutiny after pro-Palestinian protesters disrupted several stages of the Tour of Spain earlier this year.
“It’s hard to know what the situation will be in nine months. We’ll have to see,” Prudhomme said of the start venue, which had been negotiated long before pro-Palestinian protesters started targeting cycling races over the participation of the Israel Premier-Tech team.
Wine country and mountain ranges
The route takes the peloton into France via the Pyrรฉnรฉes and up as far as Bordeaux, before setting off on a diagonal route toward the Alps and a hefty overnight transfer to Paris for the final day. The peloton will race through several regions celebrated for their wine with Bordeaux, Bergerac and Beaujolais along the way, not to mention Evian, with its world-famous mineral water.
The riders will tackle all five of France’s mountain ranges: the Pyrรฉnรฉes, the Massif Central, the Jura, the Vosges and then an extraordinarily challenging final week in the Alps.
Stage 19 and 20 tackle the legendary Alpe d’Huez mountain, where British rider Tom Pidcock announced himself to the world. His death-defying descent of the Col du Galibier followed by an agonized and eventually triumphant ascent around the 21-shoelaced curves of Alpe d’Huez made him a fan favorite.
Montmartre climb nailed down
Introduced in 2025 as part of the Olympic Games legacy, the final stage will again feature three ascents of the cobbled Rue Lepic in Montmartre, where this year crowds partied all day in the bistros before being treated to a memorable duel as Wout Van Aert dropped the game champion-in-waiting Pogacar.
“We wanted to nail this down again and hope to make it a regular feature,” Prudhomme said of the wildly successful last day romp watched by almost nine million people on French television.
The increasingly popular Tour de France Femme starts in Lausanne, Switzerland, a week after the men’s one finishes. Defending champion Pauline Ferrand-Prรฉvot and Swiss rider Marlen Reusser should feature strongly in a nine-day race that takes in Mont Ventoux.
“It’s a nasty route we’ve put together and a mistake on any day can make the difference,” race director Marion Rousse said. The women’s race ends in Nice with a run along the iconic Promenade des Anglais.