Tour de France

The 2023 Tour de France marks the 110th edition of cycling's flagship race. Starting in Bilbao, Spain, the route traces a path eastwards across France, through the Pyrenees mountains, into the Alps, before heading north for a customary final day in Paris. 

The three-week event is the second of the trio Grand Tours, coming after the Giro d'Italia and before the Vuelta a España. 

Tour de France 2023: Overview

Tour de France 2023: key information

• Tour de France 2023 route guide
• Tour de France 2023 key stages
• Tour de France leaders' jerseys
• Tour de France winning bikes
• Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift 2023: Everything you need to know

Where will the Tour de France start in 2023?

Tour de France 2023 Grand Depart information

Bilbao, Spain

Saturday 1 July 2023

Following 2022's hugely successful Grand Départ in Denmark, the Tour de France will once again start away from home soil in 2023. The 2023 Tour de France will kick off in Spain - more specifically in Bilbao, in the country's Basque region.

It'll be the first time the race has started in Spain since 1992, with the first stage a 185km hilly coastal loop.

Day two is a tough 210km from Vitoria-Gasteiz to San Sebastián, while stage three will begin in Amorebieta-Etxano, where there will be 80km of coast roads before the Tour re-enters France. 

Tour de France 2023 route

The 2023 Tour de France route is set to favour the climbers, counting four summit finishes and just one time trial. 

Tour de France 2023: Quote of the Day

At the route presentation for the 2023 edition of the Tour de France, Tadej Pogačar gave a resounding thumbs up to what he saw. 

The 2023 Tour de France route looks like it's one for the climbers, and being one of the best at going uphill in the world, the UAE Team Emirates rider should be licking his lips at the prospect of four summit finishes.

"I really like this course," Pogačar said. "The first week is already hard, and the third week is really, really hard, so it's going to be fun. I cannot wait for July. It's good that the hardest stages come early in the Tour de France, it makes it so much more interesting," he added. 

Tour de France jerseys

Much like every year in recent memory, the jerseys and classifications are the yellow jersey for the overall leader, green jersey for the leader in the points standings, polka-dot jersey for the mountain classification, and the white jersey for the best young rider.

Along with the jersey prizes, there is an award for the most combative rider of each stage, with the winner wearing a red number on the following day. This is awarded each day with a 'Super Combativity' award decided by a jury at the end of the race for the most active rider throughout the entire event.

There is also a team classification where the time of the first three riders from each team is put together to create a single time. This is then done in a similar way as the individual general classification.

In addition, there are plenty of bonus seconds up for grabs at the race. There are ten, six and four bonus seconds available at the end of each stage for the first three riders, as well as bonus sprints that are dotted throughout the race on key climbs to try and make the racing more entertaining for spectators.

Of course, there's also prize money up for grabs. For winning the 2022 edition of the race, Jonas Vingegaard collected €610,000 (£526,000/$634,000), a sum which is customarily shared out among the team's riders and staff.

Tour de France 2023 teams

There will be 22 teams of eight riders at the 2023 Tour de France. This includes all 18 UCI WorldTour teams, as well as the two best-ranked UCI ProTeams, and two further squads invited by the organiser, ASO. 

Below is a list of all the participating teams:

AG2R Citroën Team (Fra)

Alpecin Deceuninck (Bel)

Astana Qazaqstan Team (Kaz)

Bora-Hansgrohe (Ger)

EF Education-Easypost (USA)

Groupama-FDJ (Fra)

Ineos Grenadiers (GBr)

Intermarché-Circus-Wanty (Bel)

Jumbo-Visma (Ned)

Movistar Team (Esp)

Soudal Quick-Step (Bel)

Team Arkea-Samsic (Fra)

Team Bahrain Victorious (Brn)

Team Cofidis (Fra)

Team DSM (Ned)

Team Jayco AlUla (Aus)

Trek-Segafredo (USE)

UAE Team Emirates (UAE)

Best placed UCI ProTeams: 

Lotto Dstny (Bel) 

TotalEnergies (Fra)

Two teams invited by the organiser:

Israel-Premier Tech (Isr)

Uno-X Pro Cycling (Nor)

Tour de France 2023 general classification riders

Little is currently known as to which general classification riders will appear on the start line in Bilbao on July 1. 

Reigning-champion Jonas Vingegaard will almost certainly make an appearance and said in October that he is "up for the challenge" of defending his title. Meanwhile Tadej Pogačar said that he was looking forward to July at the route announcement. 

The route very much favours climbers such as France's David Gaudu with just 22 kilometres of time trialling on offer. Remco Evenepoel's team boss Patrick Lefevere said that he feels that the Belgian "can do well on every kind of course”, although the world champion is not expected to take the start line in Bilbao. 

British team Ineos Grenadiers are planning a three-pronged attack at this summer's Tour de France, with Carlos Rodríguez, Dani Martínez and 2019 race winner Egan Bernal sharing leadership. 

Tour de France 2023 sprinters

Jasper Philipsen of Alpecin-Deceuninck was one of the star men of last year's Tour de France, taking victory on the Champs-Elysées in Paris. If the Belgian returns to the French grand tour in 2023 then he could mount a serious challenge for the green jersey. 

Mark Cavendish missed out on selection last year as his Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl team went with Fabio Jakobsen, who won stage two. Cavendish, however, will line up this July with Astana Qazaqstan, in the hope of surpassing the all-time stage win record, which he currently shares with Eddy Merckx, tied on 34 victories. 

Wout Van Aert won the green jersey in 2022 and will be tough to beat in the competition if he returns to the Tour in 2023.

Tour de France 2023 on TV

The 2023 Tour de France route is set to favour the climbers, counting four summit finishes and just one time trial. 

Tour de France past winners in the last 10 years

2012: Bradley Wiggins (GBr)
2013: Chris Froome (GBr)
2014: Vincenzo Nibali (Ita)
2015: Chris Froome (GBr)
2016: Chris Froome (GBr)
2017: Chris Froome (GBr)
2018: Geraint Thomas (GBr)
2019: Egan Bernal (Col)
2020: Tadej Pogačar (Slo)
2021: Tadej Pogačar (Slo) 
2022: Jonas Vingegaard (Den)

Tour de France 2022: Jonas Vingegaard crowned the winner in Paris

Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) was crowned Tour de France 2022 champion following the traditional processional final stage into Paris, which was won by Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck)

As usual, the final stage saw a relaxed peloton sipping Champagne before a frantic few laps around the centre of Paris. Philipsen sprinted to his second win of the 2022 edition of the Tour on the Champs-Élysées ahead of Dylan Groenewegen (BikeExchange-Jayco) and Alexandr Kristoff (Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert Matériaux).

Danish ace Vingegaard finished 2 minutes and 43 seconds ahead of 2021's winner Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates), with Geraint Thomas (Ineos Grenadiers) third at 7-22.

Pogačar, who would have made it a hat-trick of wins had he been able to defend his title, did win the young riders classification, while Vingegaard's Jumbo-Visma team-mate Wout van Aert claimed the green jersey with a record points haul of 480.

How does the Tour de France work?

The Tour de France is one of a trio of races that are three weeks long, known as the Grand Tours, alongside the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta a España. The Tour is the best known and arguably the most prestigious.

It is the second of the three races in the calendar with the Giro taking place in May, the Tour usually in July, and the Vuelta in August and September.

The Tour, like all Grand Tours, takes on varying terrain with flat days for sprinters, hilly days for punchers and mountains for the climbers and GC riders, along with time trials, so that a winner of the race has to be able to perform on all types of road.

The main prize in the race, known as the general classification, is based on time with the overall leader wearing the yellow jersey. The race leader and eventual winner is the rider who has the lowest accumulated time over the 21 days of racing. Riders can win the Tour de France without winning a stage, as Chris Froome did in 2017. Time bonuses of 10, six, and four seconds are given to stage winners though, creating incentive for those general classification riders to chase individual victories and lower their overall time.

In 2020 it took race winner Tadej Pogačar 87-20-05 to complete the race with the second-place rider overall 59 seconds slower. That continues all the way down to the last place rider, which was Roger Kluge (Lotto-Soudal) who finished over six hours behind at a time of 6-07-02.

The white best young rider's jersey is worked out in the same way but only riders under the age of 26 are eligible for the jersey.

The polka-dot mountains jersey and the green points jersey are based on a points system and not time. The only reason time would come into account would be if riders are tied on points, then it would go to who is the best placed in the general classification.

The team classification is based on the general classification times of the first three riders of a team on each stage. The time of those three riders is added up and put onto their team's time, creating a GC list much like in the individual classifications. The leading team get to wear yellow numbers and helmets on each stage.

The final classification available is the combativity prize. This is decided by a race jury or, in more recent years, Twitter. This takes place just before the end of each stage and often goes to a rider from the breakaway who has put in a daring performance or attempted to liven up the stage by attacking. The winner of the combativity award gets to wear a special red race number on the following day's stage.

There is a final prize added to this with the Super Combativity prize being awarded on the podium in Paris. This is decided in a similar fashion to pick out the most aggressive, entertaining, and daring rider of the whole three weeks. Again, usually going to a rider who has featured regularly in the breakaway.

Stage winners do not wear anything special the day after apart from getting a small yellow jersey to stick on their number on their bike, this can be replaced if they win multiple stages.

Teams used to come to the race with nine riders but the UCI, cycling's governing body, decided that nine riders from each team was too dangerous and dropped it to eight, however more teams now take part.

How long is the Tour de France?

The Tour de France takes place over 23 days with 21 of them being race days. The riders get two days of resting; they usually fall on the second and third Monday of the race.

This year's race is 3,328km long, which is 2,068 miles, around the same distance from Washington DC to Las Vegas, or Helsinki to Lisbon. 

Road stages can range from anything around 100km to something approaching 250km, sometimes more. This year the shortest road stage is the last stage around the streets of Paris at 108.4km with the longest being 249.1km on stage seven, Vierzon to Le Creusot.

Road stages often take around four to five hours with the longer days sometimes nudging over seven hours.

Time trials are always much shorter. Team time trials have long since gone out of fashion in the world of road racing so individual time trials are the main focus these days. 

In 2021 the Tour has two individual time trials for the riders to tackle, one on stage five which is 27.2km long from Changé to Laval, and the second on stage 20 over 30.8km from Libourne to Saint-Emilion.

It is a whole day of coverage for the spectators, but for a rider it is not yet known how long it will take to ride these distances, but it should be around 30-40 minutes.

When does the Tour de France start?

The 2023 Tour de France starts on July 1 in Bilbao, Spain, with a road stage. There will be three stages overall in the Spanish Basque Country, before heading into France, finishing in Paris three weeks later.

The 2023 edition of the race runs from 1-23 July, covering 21 stages.