CONQUERING MONTJUÏC
The third start of the du Tour de France in Spain, following San Sebastian (in 1992) and Bilbao (in 2023), will be the first welcomed by Barcelona, to kick off the 113th edition of the race.
The Catalan capital, which has already welcomed the Tour de France for stages on three occasions (in 1957, 1965 and 2009), shares a long history with cycling, especially on the roads of Montjuïc hill, which has hosted stages of the Vuelta a España and Volta a Catalunya as well as races at the World Championships and Olympic Games.
The main site of the 1992 Olympics will also be at the heart of the program on the first two stages on 4th and 5th July 2026, because the finishes of the inaugural team time-trial (19.7 km) and the following day’s stage (178 km) will both take place on Montjuïc hill in front of the Olympic stadium, with, from the outset, a possible showdown between the big favorites for the race.
Travelers who choose the Costa Brava or Costa Dorada as a destination generally enjoy a very leisurely break between beaches, museums and tapas bars. This, however, is certainly not the program conjured up for the riders on the Tour de France 2026, whose first two stages promise a lively start to the race. In Barcelona, the Montjuïc district is steeped in the memories of all the major sporting events that have taken place here, whether they be the Formula 1 Spanish Grand Prix in the 1970s or, of course, the 1992 Olympic Games, for which this promontory was the nerve centre. In cycling terms, the place is not unfamiliar to the pack, because stage finishes on the Tour de France, Vuelta a España or Volta a Catalunya have taken place here over time, won (not necessarily in chronological order) by elite riders such as Miguel Poblet, Federico Bahamontes, Jacques Anquetil, Felice Gimondi, Bernard Hinault, Thor Hushovd, Philippe Gilbert, or more recently Remco Evenepoel and Tadej Pogacar.
The battle on the Tour in 2026 will begin with the 50th team time-trial in its history, a custom borrowed from the Vuelta but a first for the Tour, this time adding a subtlety experimented since 2023 on Paris-Nice. On the collective race against the clock, individual times will be taken into account, meaning the battle between the favourites will begin on the very first day of the race. It will not begin in earnest on the first section, where the groups of riders still pedalling one behind another may perhaps have the time to catch a glimpse of the Sagrada Familia, which has just been completed to celebrate the centenary of the death of its creator Antoni Gaudi. Instead, on leaving the long straight lines and entering the more winding roads on Montjuïc hill, the teams are likely to start losing elements in the last four kilometers. Race director, Thierry Gouvenou, even thinks that there are likely to be two points at which some riders fall behind before reaching the finishing line at the foot of the Olympic stadium. The first Yellow Jersey will almost certainly go to the leader of one of the most prominent teams.
The start of the following stage will take place in Tarragona, which will become the southernmost point visited in the history of the Tour. It is on returning to the Catalan capital after traveling along the coast that the racing scenario will be set to turn into a pitched battle. Two tough slopes will have to be tackled by the riders on a twelve-kilometer long final circuit: the Montjuïc Castle slope, which is a 1.6-km wall-like ascent with an average gradient of 9.3%, should serve, on the third climb up it, as a springboard for the last pretenders for victory, who will do battle on the 600 meters of the Olympic Stadium slope. “There are many roads in this district and as a result plenty of possibilities for drawing up a circuit. I think we have managed to find the most difficult combination possible,” said Thierry Gouvenou, who compared the route with the many races that have previously come to a conclusion on the site. For the third stage, the pack will head towards the French border for a destination which has not yet been unveiled, after leaving Granollers, which is just as famous for its handball club as for its F1 Moto GP race circuit.
