The Tour de France 2026

Go to ►

The 2026 Tour de France stage by stage

Tour de France Route map

Find hotels in France

 

Le Tour 2026 - A GUIDE TO THE ROUTE

 
The 2026 Tour de France starts on July 4th In Barcelona, Spain, and finishes in Paris on Sunday 26th July. Unusually, apart from two days in central eastern France (Franche-Comté and Alsace areas) and the classic final day around Paris, the whole of the French part of the tour, after the three days in Spain, is in the southern half of the country. The south of France being hillier and more mountainous than the south, the 2026 Tour de France will have plenty up uphills, plenty of downhills, but not so much on the flat. The official Tour guide classifies 7 stages as flat, but for some of these, the term is relative.
Riders will take in five different mountain areas, the Pyrenees, the Massif Central, the Vosges, the Jura and the Alps - with five and a  half days in the Alps.
    After that, it's back north for the final day's traditional ride around Paris, for the traditional finish on the Champs Elysées.

After two and a half days in Spain, riders end the third stage at Les Angles, a ski resort in the eastern Pyrenees.  Next day is a day in the Aude and the foothills of the Pyrenees, with a ride from the historic UNESCO heritage site of Carcassonne, to Foix, capital of the Ariège.  The following day is another in the Pyrenean foothills, taking riders from Lannemazan to Pau - which is also the departure moint for the next day, the real Pyrenean day finishing in the spectacular setting of the Cirque de Gavarnie.
   On Friday 10th, riders have a relatively flat ride from the small town of Hagetmau, in the Landes department, as far as Bordeaux, another UNESCO world heritage site.  Saturday is a tour of the Dordogne, starting at Bergerac and finishing at Périgueux, and taking in some of the major sites of the department, including Sarlat, La Roche Gageac and Les Eyzies. The next day, Sunday 12th, takes riders from Malemort, in the Corrèze near Brive la Gaillarde, to Ussel, passing through the pretty small towns of Collonges la Rouge and Turenne, then across the sparsely-populated forested area of the Plateau de Millevaches (which actually means a thousand lakes, not a thousand cows!), to Ussel.
    Monday 13th is a rest day in the Cantal department of the Auvergne, before a gruelling dayon 14th July,  taking riders through the volcanic Cantal mountains for a finish at the ski resort of Le Lioran.  Stage 11, on 15th July, is another relatively flat stage, as riders go along the Allier and Loire valleys from the genteel spa town of Vichy, to the town of Nevers, in western Burgundy.  The following day is a hilly ride across the south of the Morvan hills, starting at the Magny-Cours race circuit just south of Nevers, and finishing at Châlon-sur-Saône. Next day, Friday 17th July, is the longest ride of the tour, 205 km, taking riders through the northern part of the Franche-Comté area from Dole to Belfort., at the foot of the Vosges mountains.  The following day is in Alsace, taking riders from the industrial city of Mulhouse, with its national railway museum and car museum, to a finish at the top of the Markstein mountain.
    Stage 15, on Sunday 19th July, is the start of the Alpine interlude; riders set off from the small town of Saint-Claude in the Jura mountains, before skirting round the western tip of Switzerland for an Alpine finish at the Plateau de Solaison.  The next four days are spent in the Alps, and include, for the first time ever, two finishes at  the Alpe d'Huez, at 1850m - the second of these two stages, starting in Bourg d'Oisans, taking in the daunting Col du Galibier, at 2642 m, the highest point in the 2026 Tour.
    The Tour concludes on Sunday 26th July, after a leisurely 130 km ride from Thoiry, including a tour through the streets of Paris, up over the hill of Montmartre, for the final sprint to the finish on the Champs Elysées.
   



Visit the Official site of the tour de France


 A brief introduction to the regions of France