2026 Tour de France to begin in Barcelona

The 2026 men's Tour de France will begin in Barcelona, marking the fourth time in five years that a foreign Grand Départ will take place.

The race's organiser, ASO, announced the news on Tuesday morning at a ceremony in the city with the Mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni.

It will be the seventh time the race has visited Barcelona, over three editions, in 1957, 1965 and 2009. 15 years ago, Thor Hushovd won stage six next to the Montjuïc Stadium, overlooking the Catalan city.

Barcelona is familiar to cycling, being the regular finishing point of the Volta a Catalunya. It also hosted the start of the Vuelta a España last syear.

Stages one and two will take place entirely within Catalunya before stage three crosses the border mid-stage back into France. It might mean an early trip into the Pyrenees in the 2026 race, as happened last year, with the first mountain test coming on stage five.

Following Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2022, Bilbao, Spain, in 2023, and Florence, Italy, in 2024, this represents a new era of foreign race starts for the Tour. Lille, France, in 2025, bucks that trend, but this is the exception, not the rule.

A press release read: "South we go. The venue chosen for the Grand Départ of the 2026 Tour de France will set a new record in the history of the event, as Barcelona, straddling the 41st parallel, will edge out Porto-Vecchio as the southernmost start of the race by a dozen minutes of latitude. 

"The Grande Boucle has already graced the streets of the Catalan capital, most recently in 2009, when Thor Hushovd out-sprinted the Spanish speedsters Óscar Freire and José Joaquín Rojas to take stage6 right next to Montjuïc Stadium. 

"Since that fleeting Spanish sojourn [in 2009], the Tour has gone through the wild experience of a Grand Départ in the Basque Country in 2023 and is now gearing up for another equally intense adventure on the shores of the Mediterranean. 

"The Grande Boucle will share a momentous occasion with the people of Barcelona, as the Sagrada Família is slated to finally reach completion in 2026. The cathedral, whose silhouette has become an iconic symbol of Barcelona, sprang from the brilliant mind of the architect Antoni Gaudí, who adorned the city with numerous buildings and part of his whimsical spirit before he died, as fate would have it, in 1926."