The Tour de France organisers have confirmed the longstanding rumours that the 2026 Grand Départ will be in Barcelona, with the race to be present in the city for a period of three days.
The Catalan capital will host the race from July 4-6, 2026. It’s been reported that stage 1 will be run off completely within the bounds of the city, and that stage 2 will also start and finish in Barcelona. After another start in the city on stage 3, the Tour then heads towards more familiar terrain in France.
Negotiations for what will be the fourth foreign Tour de France start in five years have not been fast-moving, although as early as May, it was already being reported as all but a done deal by local media.
The definitive confirmation from ASO came on Tuesday, followed by a ceremony in Barcelona’s town hall. The city will follow Copenhagen in 2022, Bilbao in 2023, Firenze in 2024 and Lille in 2025 as the Grand Départ for men's cycling’s biggest bike race.
Barcelona has already hosted the opening stage of the Vuelta a España in 1962 and 2023. Last year, the opening stage of the Vuelta was an early evening team time trial that was partly overshadowed by controversy concerning insufficient illumination when the race route was unexpectedly affected by heavy rainshowers and cloud cover, while the automatic street lighting, not timed to be activated before full darkness, failed to switch itself on.
That was followed up by a stage 2 finish in Barcelona’s Montjuic Park, widely seen as the epicentre of the city’s well-established relationship with road racing, and which Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme hinted strongly on Tuesday would likely feature in the 2026 Tour’s visit as well.
Long the host to one of the final one-day races of the season, the now defunct Subida a Montjuic - won six times by Eddy Merckx - the entire finishing circuit of the last stage of the Volta a Catalunya has always been held in Montjuic and it often features on stages held by the Vuelta as well. Montjuic was also where the 1973 World Championships and cycling events in the 1992 Olympic Games - both road and track - took place.
Barcelona itself has been visited by the Tour de France three times in the past, most recently 2009, with an uphill bunch sprint stage win for Thor Hushovd. The next day’s stage, finishing in Andorra at Ordino-Arcalis, also began in Barcelona.
The first time the Tour reached Barcelona was in 1957, with three stages either starting and finishing there, including an individual time trial won by French legend Jacques Anquetil, who went on to claim the first of five overall victories. In 1963, the city witnessed an epic solo victory for local star José Pérez Francés.
The Tour’s start in 2026 will coincide - barring last-minute delays - with the long-awaited completion of one of Barcelona’s best-known religious monuments, the Sagrada Familia cathedral, on which work began back in 1882.
“We love the big cities, be they French or foreign,” race director Christian Prudhomme told L’Équipe. “But on condition that we also continue to visit the smallest places, the villages in France, too. That’s non-negotiable. Barcelona had the political will to do it, but also a sporting interest because of Montjuic.”
