Roll up, roll up, step forward to take a look at Monsieur Prudhomme’s latest list of wheezes for the 2026 Tour de France. There’s an opening day team time trial with times taken individually; the Pyrenees on day three; the first bunch sprint not until stage five; a trip to every major mountain range in France; a new climb for the Tour in the Alps; two days on Alpe d’Huez; and the Montmartre circuit once again.
This is an intriguing Tour de France route, designed in part to get the kids off (err official supplier) TikTok to tune into the race or watch it pass by. If last year was one mini-Classic after another, from Boulogne-sur-Mer to Paris, this year is more slow-burn, or that’s the message anyway. It’s a boxset, a marathon, a Test match, not reality TV, a sprint, a T20. Not that this is old school, there is still enough to entertain a teenager; there is only one stage over 200km, what with attention spans being what they are these days.
News editor at Cycling Weekly, Adam brings his weekly opinion on the goings on in cycling in The Leadout, a newsletter series from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. He’s already looking forward to his fifth Tour next summer, even if he is a bit bored of Carcassonne.
The title of the press release from the Tour’s organisers, ASO, gave the game away in terms of what is hoped. “In crescendo” was the message, and that’s what race director Christian Prudhomme and his team hope from a backloaded route, one which only has brief sorties into the mountains until stage 14.
From then on, it’s reasonably relentless, a route that feels more redolent of the Giro d’Italia, with its ever-present crucial final week. Le Markstein on stage 14, Plateau de Solaison on 15, all leading to the Alpe d’Huez double on stages 19 and 20. It is, as Prudhomme proudly told the audience at the route presentation, the first time that the biggest day in the mountains comes on the final Saturday, the penultimate stage before Paris.
That crescendo, a build to a grand finale on Alpe d’Huez is a solid target, an aim which all Grand Tours should have, three weeks of racing which is still in the balance. As Prudhomme himself told Sporza: “The course has been drawn to build gradually, stage after stage, with tension that keeps growing.” The reason for such an emphasis this time around is also obvious to the lay observer: Tadej Pogačar. The ambition is that he won’t be able to build up a dominant lead until the last few mountain stages, a parcours aimed at not letting him run (cycle) away in yellow.
The world champion has been dominant at the last two editions, possibly too dominant. By the time the Tour reached the Alps (for the second time) in 2024, the UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider was three minutes ahead. This year, when the Tour entered its climax on stage 15 and Mont Ventoux, Pogačar had four minutes. Why should 2026 be any different?
You can see it now. UAE win the opening TTT in Barcelona, they won in the discipline at the Vuelta a España this year, and then Pogačar wins stage two, which finishes on the Montjuic circuit, where he has won before at the Volta a Catalunya. Then what? A repeat of the last two editions. That’s the Pogačar procession that the Tour’s organisers will want to avoid, but they can’t Tadej-proof a whole route.
That is why there is less of the “hardest route ever” talk going around this time. There will still be well over 50,000m of elevation in over 3,000km of racing, but the Pyrenees are toned down this year, and while five mountain ranges are visited, it’s only once the race heads towards the Jura and the Alps that things will become serious. There will be less of the sprinters moaning, with back-to-back flat days twice – it gives me déjà vu for 2019, when Dylan Groenewegen won twice in a row after stultifying days out.
This is a Tour route trying to do two things at once: to entertain and delight an audience which demands constant entertainment and delight, but also to provide a finish befitting of a three-week race. It’s not just because of Pogačar, given Jonas Vingegaard had the race wrapped up by stage 17 in 2022 and 2023, but Pogačar is currently the man to restrain. That seems impossible, though.
According to Prudhomme, “until the last mountain stage, anything is possible”, but this relies on the best rider in the world not doing his thing until Alpe d’Huez comes into view. Let’s all suspend our disbelief at that happening then, that’s a kind of suspense, right?
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