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The routes of the 2026 men’s and women’s Tours de France, revealed in Paris on Thursday morning, will climax on two of the most famous climbs in world cycling, Alpe d’Huez and Mont Ventoux.
The mountains will host key stages, with the Ventoux featuring in the Tour de France Femmes for the first time and a double stage finish to the ski station at Alpe d’Huez providing the pivotal moment in the 113th running of the men’s race.
The men’s Tour starts in Barcelona on 4 July with a rare team time trial over 19km and spends three days in north-east Spain before crossing the Pyrenees into France, with a first climbing finish to Les Angles.
The threat of pro-Palestinian protests, which overshadowed this year’s Vuelta a Espana and forced the cancellation of the final stage, during the Grand Départ in Catalunya in July appear to have receded, for now.
There are a number of familiar stage towns – Pau, Bordeaux, Bergerac, Chambéry, Gap and Paris – and some innovations, including a mountain finish, deep in the Pyrenees, to Gavarnie-Gèdre, and a first visit to the fearsome climb of Plateau de Solaison.
On a route with more than 54,000m of vertical gain, there is no doubt that the showcase finale on Alpe d’Huez, which will host the finishes to stages 19 and 20, will be the key moment of the race.
The penultimate stage, 24 hours before the peloton arrives in Paris for a reprise of this year’s circuit around Montmartre, has a monstrous 5,600m elevation gain and takes in the climbs of the Croix de Fer, Télégraphe and Galibier, before the second haul to the Alpe, via the rugged and steep Col de Sarenne.
As the men’s race focuses on Alpe d’Huez, the Tour de France Femmes makes another big step in prestige, by moving to a new slot in the calendar, a week after the men’s race ends, and breaking new ground with a firstvisit to Mont Ventoux.
The new stand-alone date for the Femmes reveals how quickly the race has established itself and how popular it has become, particularly after the win of France’s Pauline Ferrand-Prévot this summer.
“We no longer need men for the Tour de France Femmes to exist,” said the race director, Marion Rousse. “There’s no need to have the men’s race as a platform to launch the women’s race. Now people are waiting to see us.
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“People have embraced us and we are fixed in the sporting landscape. The new dates, separate to the men, prove it.”
After a Grand Départ in Switzerland, with stages in Lausanne and to Geneva, the race crosses to France for an individual time trial to Dijon, before turning south through the Rhone valleyand a penultimate stage to the summit of the “Giant of Provence”.
From the Vaucluse, the peloton heads towards the Côte d’Azur for the final stage, in central Nice, on 9 August. The Femmes also hits new heights, with almost 19,000m of climbing in nine stages of racing.
