Tour of Flanders 2026

Tour of Flanders start list

Tour of Flanders information

The 110th edition of the Tour of Flanders, or known as Ronde van Vlaanderen in Flemish, takes place on Sunday, April 5, the traditional calendar spot of the first Sunday of the month.

This cobbled one-day Spring Classic is the second of the five Monuments of the season, following Milan-San Remo.

The Ronde, as the Tour of Flanders is known in Belgium, began in 1919 and covers 270km across Flanders with more than a dozen categorised climbs and a handful of cobbled sectors.

This year's race will play host to past winners Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Premier Tech) and Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates- XRG).

Belgium's own Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) will also make his debut at the race following a surprise announcement on Wednesday.

In 2024, Van der Poel attacked 45km from the finish and earned a solo victory. The victory gave Van der Poel his third Ronde title, which put in a select group of six other riders who have won the Monument three times each - Achiel Buysse (1940, 1941, 1943), Fiorenzo Magni (1949, 1950, 1951), Eric Leman (1970, 1072, 1973), Johan Museeuw (1993, 1995, 1998), Tom Boonen (2005, 2006, 2012) and Fabian Cancellara (2010, 2013, 2014).

In 2025, Pogačar soloed to his second Tour of Flanders victory, using the Oude Kwaremont to whittle down the lead group and then drop all his rivals the third time up the cobbled climb.

Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) outsprinted Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) to take second, while Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease A Bike) finished fourth just ahead of Jasper Stuyven (Lidl-Trek).

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2026 Tour of Flanders route

See the full details of the 2026 Tour of Flanders route

Tour of Flanders history

De Ronde, the Tour of Flanders, or simply Vlaanderens Mooiste – the Dutch for "Flanders' Finest" – it doesn't really matter: however you describe it, for over a century the Tour of Flanders has been the key point of Belgium's cycling calendar, developing into its biggest annual bike race and a major goal of many of the true greats of the sport.

Offering a ferociously difficult mixture of cobbles and hills and often held in rough spring weather, Flanders was first held in 1913 and is the second Monument of the season, with its current position in the calendar 15 days after Milan-San Remo and a fortnight before Paris-Roubaix.

Created by Léon van den Haute, co-founder of the sports newspaper Sportwereld, the first race was 330 kilometres long and was won by Belgian Paul Deman, who doubled cycling with work as a carpet maker. The current defending champion is Tadej Pogačar, who soloed away to victory in the 270-kilometre race to win for a second time ahead of Mads Pedersen and Mathieu van der Poel.

Flanders really took off as a race in the 1930s, with crowds of up to half a million lining the route and motorised police needed for the first time in its history to control the fans. The 1930s also saw Romain Gijssels become the first to win two consecutive Rondes. Then, in 1950, its most emblematic climb, the Muur de Geraardsbergen, was included. As the race took on a more recognisable format to modern viewers in the 1960s, by the 1970s, riders like Eddy Merckx, Roger De Vlaeminck and Freddy Maertens regularly made it their target and Flanders' place in cycling history was more than guaranteed.

Seven riders jointly hold the record of three wins in Flanders, ranging from Belgians Achiel Buysse, Eric Leman, Johan Museeuw, and Tom Boonen, together with Dutch rider Mathieu van der Poel and Swiss racer Fabian Cancellara. In 2005, it joined the ProTour and, since 2011, has formed part of the WorldTour.