4 min readKey PointsThe men’s 2026 Tour de France is July 4-26 over 21 stages and 3,321 km.The 2026 Tour de France Femmes takes place August 1-9 across nine stages and covers 1,175 km.The men’s race averages almost 100 miles daily with stages ranging from 19.6 km to 205.8 km, while women’s stages vary from 21 km individual time trials to a 172 km road stage.
The world’s most well-known and popular cycling event, the men’s edition of the 2026 Tour de France, takes place over the course of three weeks. This year’s race started on Saturday, July 4, and runs through Sunday, July 26. The 2026 women’s race, the Tour de France Femmes, kicks off on August 1 and concludes on August 9.
For 2026, the twenty-one-stage men’s Tour de France started in Barcelona with an opening-day team time trial, before heading towards the mountains. It finishes in Paris on the Champs-Élysées, after a circuit that features three rides up the Montmartre. The Tour de France Femmes race is nine stages, starting in Lausanne before heading into the Alps. The 2026 Femmes race concludes with a 99 km circuit in Nice with a finish line on the Promenade Anglais along the Mediterranean Sea.
The Tour de France’s race course is different every year. This summer, the men will travel nearly 3,321 kilometers (2,065 miles), while the women ride 1,175 km (730 miles). Amaura Sport Organisation (ASO), which owns and operates both events, announced the routes last year.
Viewing Tip: The United States is one of the few places that uses miles to measure distance, so when you watch coverage, remember to “think metric.” One kilometer is equal to .621 miles. A 5K, for example, is 3.2 miles.
How Long is the Average Tour de France?
The men’s Tour de France is traditionally three weeks long and typically split into 21 stages—days of riding—with one or two rest days. Depending on how the dates and route are organized, in some years, it has been only 20 stages. In other years, the race has included as many as 25 stages. The first two men’s Tours in the early 1900s featured only six stages.
In total, the mileage covered over 21 combined stages tends to run around 2,200 miles. This means the men race about 100 miles most days.
The current incarnation of the women’s Tour de France, which restarted in 2022 as an eight-stage event, has now expanded to cover nine stages. While the women’s race is shorter in overall distance and daily miles, the competition is typically much tighter than in the men’s edition.
Is Every Stage the Same Length?
Not at all! Stages in the Tour de France vary wildly in length. Some days have been 180-plus-mile races, while others are 30-mile fast and furious. The styles of racing also change: There are individual time trials, team time trials, and standard road races that take place with a mass start.
In the 2026 Tour de France, the shortest men’s stage is a 19.6 km team time trial, and the longest is a hilly, 205.8 km stage. The shortest stage in the Femmes is a 21 km individual time trial; the longest is a 172 km road stage on the penultimate day.
What’s the Shortest Tour de France Stage?
Since the entire course changes each year, so do the lengths of the stages. In 1988, the second shortest race of the modern era (2,042 miles) also had the shortest time trial and flat stage. The one-kilometer individual time trial from the prologue of the 1988 Tour de France is the shortest race ever run during the Tour. Guido Bontemp won it in 1 minute and 14 seconds. The 1988 race also contained the shortest flat stage at 23.6 miles. Adri van der Poel won that stage in 46 minutes and 36 seconds. Ardent cycling fans might recognize Adri as the father of multi-time cyclocross World Champion, road, and mountain bike superstar Mathieu van der Poel.
What Was the Shortest Tour de France?
That depends on what you mean by the shortest—the second men’s Tour de France ever run—back in 1904—was only six stages long. However, it covered 1,483 miles, so some stages lasted for nearly a full day. In the last two decades, the shortest men’s Tour was in 2002. It covered 2,035 miles across 20 stages.
What was the Longest Tour de France?
That would be the 1926 Tour de France, which covered 3,569 miles in an attempt to ride around the border of France. Close behind that is the 1919 Tour de France, which also has the dubious honor of being the slowest Tour de France, 14.9 mph.
Despite being almost 200 miles shorter than the 1926 route, it was only a few hours faster in overall ride time for the winner. It also featured the longest one-day stage—265 miles—and reportedly took the winner almost 19 hours to complete it. That year’s Tour also only had 10 finishers out of 69 starters, the lowest number of Tour finishers ever. Yes, 1919 was rough.
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What About Elevation Gain?
Remember, a lot of the stages of the Tour de France go up and down mountains, so not only are riders contending with 100-plus mile days in the saddle, they’re climbing thousands of feet in the process. In 2020, one stage included 14,435 feet of climbing over 118 miles. That’s a half-Everest in a single stage.
How fast do riders go?
In recent years, the average speed of the men’s race has exceeded 25 miles per hour (41 kilometers per hour) over 21 stages of racing. The speed changes from year to year depending on the riders, elevation gain, temperature, and length of the stages. But it stays fairly close to that 25 mph speed.
Want to know more about why the average pace of the Tour is increasing? Check out our in-depth explanation.
As Deputy Editor, Tara Seplavy leads Bicycling’s product test team; after having previously led product development and sourcing for multiple bike brands, run World Championship winning mountain bike teams, wrenched at renowned bicycle shops in Brooklyn, raced everything from criteriums to downhill, and ridden bikes on six different continents (landing herself in hospital emergency rooms in four countries and counting). Based in Easton, Pennsylvania, Tara spends tons of time on the road and trail testing products. A familiar face at cyclocross races, crits, and bike parks in the Mid Atlantic and New England, on weekends she can often be found racing for the New York City-based CRCA/KruisCX team. When not riding a bike, or talking about them, Tara listens to a lot of ska, punk, and emo music, and consumes too much social media.
Molly writes about cycling, nutrition and training with an emphasis on bringing more women into sport. She’s the author of nine books including the Shred Girls series and is the founder of Strong Girl Publishing. She co-hosts The Consummate Athlete Podcast and spends most of her free time biking and running on trails, occasionally joined by her mini-dachshund.