Will Tadej Pogačar win a sixth Tour de France? - What can we expect from the 2027 Grand Boucle

The 2026 Tour de France is over for another year but that means the 2027 edition is only 11 months away. We will only know the full route in October but 2027 looks set to be the year Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) attempts to set a new record of six Tour de France victories.

Pogačar will be 28 when the 2027 Tour starts in Edinburgh, once the age of a Grand Tour winner's peak. That has surely fallen to 24 or 25 due to the precocious development of the best riders in the peloton but Pogačar can potentially win further Tours.

He joined the Tour de France 'Le Club des Cinq', the select group of five-time Tour winners this year. He rarely talks about his true ambitions and future goals but dropped a strong hint he will be targeting a sixth Tour in 2027.

"I don't like clubbing, so let's aim to get out of this club…" he joked to Eurosport.

As the dust settles on the 2026 Tour and the focus turns to the Tour de France Femmes, Cyclingnews dissects what could happen at the 2027 Tour de France.

The 2027 route - A very British Grand Départ

The 114th edition of the Tour de France will start in Great Britain with three days of racing taking the riders from Edinburgh in Scotland to Cardiff in Wales via Liverpool and the north of England. The 2027 Tour de France Femmes will also start in Britain, creating a special first double international Grand Départ.

2027 marks the fourth Tour visit to Britain. The first in 1974 was a low-key affair but the 2007 London Grand Départ kick-started the British cycling boom and then the 2014 Yorkshire Grand Départ raised the benchmark for Tour de France starts, attracting millions of road-side spectators.

Hopefully, the 2027 men's and women's Grand Départs will be a boost for cycling once again and perhaps even help rebuild Britain's post-Brexit links with Europe.

The 2027 Grand Départ stages - the first yellow jersey for the sprinters

The men's race will begin on Friday, July 2, a day earlier than usual, to give the riders and race caravan an extra rest (travel) day on Monday to head to France via plane and ferry to northern France.

Stage 1 is over 184km from Edinburgh to Carlisle on mostly flat roads and so offers the sprinters a shot at taking the first yellow jersey after they were made to wait and to suffer until stage 5 this year.

Stage 2 is probably the longest of the 2027 race and is over 223km from Keswick in the hilly Lake District to Liverpool. It'll be a hard day's stage, even for the fab four big-name contenders.

After another transfer to north Wales, stage 3 is from Welshpool to Cardiff, with the hills of Wales and 3000 metres of elevation making for a tough day in the saddle. The Côte de Caerffili comes just 10km from the finish and so the Ardennes style stage could even inspire some GC racing.

The Pyrenees first - the 2027 route information

The full 2027 Tour route will be unveiled in late October but there have already been some leaks and rumours about stages.

According to Ouest France, the Cotentin peninsula in Normandy is expected to host the 'grand retour' in France, with stage 5 likely to be a loop around the port of Cherbourg.

The Tour will then head south, perhaps with a visit to the cycling hot-bed of Brittany and the coast, before tackling the Pyrenees first, perhaps as early as the second weekend.

The Alps are again expected to host the decisive mountains, with Le Dauphiné Libéré suggesting a stage will visit the Côte de Domancy to prelude the UCI Super World Championships in Sallanches later in 2027.

Don't tell Pogačar but the Col de Granon is a candidate to host the Tour de France again, five years after Vingegaard cracked him on the climb to win the Tour. The Col de la Loze via Courchevel could also return, with Tignes and La Plagne also keen to host stages.

There is no sign that l'Alpe d'Huez will return in 2027 and so other Alpine finishes could face the overcrowding and safety issues of modern-day Tour hooligans and over-zealous spectators. Hopefully ASO will be far better at controlling the crowds and so protecting the riders.

The success of the Montemartre circuits surely means the hilly climbs of central Paris will return in 2027 and beyond. Three laps of the cobbled climb of Rue Lepic seem to be the perfect number to balance the battle between baroudeur like Mathieu van der Poel and the sprinters who once dominated on the Champs Élysées.

Route changes to try to break Pogačar's dominance

Technical director and route designer Thierry Gouvenou quickly regretted including the Col du Tourmalet so early in this race, admitting he never expected Pogačar to be so aggressive and so dominant after just six days of racing.

In an attempt to keep the GC open, we can expect Gouvenou and ASO to include easier mountain stages in the first half of the Tour, to limit Pogačar's time gains. ASO insist that they never design a race route for a specific rider but with Paul Seixas a junior time trial world champion and French junior cyclocross champion, don't be surprised to see two time trials and/or a gravel stage in the 2027 Tour.

Will Pogačar win for a sixth time?

This time last year many of us thought Pogačar's air of sadness and apparent weakness in the final week of the Tour was an indication the Pogačar era was about to end. How wrong we were.

He later revealed that he had banged his knee and was scared he might not even reach Paris. This year Pogačar seemed happier than ever - he won five stages and gifted at least two others. Pogačar may not be improving physiologically but he remains seemingly unbeatable.

It is more and more likely that Pogačar will ride this year's Vuelta a España to try to complete his Grand Tour triptych. That would allow him to focus on Paris-Roubaix and the Tour de France in 2027. He has a contract with UAE until 2030 but there have been signs that Pogačar could decide to retire after the Los Angeles Olympic Games in the summer of 2028.

That ominously means he could win two further editions of the Tour and set a new record of seven victories.

Which of Pogačar's rivals will be able to step up?

Pogačar's dominance is boring for some but there are green shoots and early signs of who might emerge in the post-Pogačar world or even be able to challenge him if he begins to fade in the final years of his decade of dominance.

Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike)

The Dane got back to his very best when he won the Giro d'Italia and seemed on track to at least challenge Pogačar.

His hopes collapsed when he blew up on the higher slopes and descent of the Col du Tourmalet and then cruelly ended when he crashed out on stage 15.

Vingegaard will be 30 next summer and so there is a real chance that he may have missed his chance to be the one who ends Pogačar's reign.

Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe)

The Belgian proved many of his doubters wrong by finishing second this year and will rightly target the Tour in years to come.

Evenepoel revealed that he lost four kilogrammes during his long Tour training and it clearly made a difference in the mountains. He finished 5:00 down on Pogačar in Paris but can perhaps start to reduce the gap in 2027.

Isaac del Toro (UAE Team Emirates-XRG)

The 22-year-old Mexican made his Tour debut but proved his talents with third on the podium. He had the protective support of Pogačar but showed he can handle the pressure and demands of the Tour.

Del Toro shares the same agent as Pogačar and their unity and friendship was perhaps a way for them to both fight off the arrival of Paul Seixas in 2028. If Del Toro and Seixas remain rivals rather than UAE teammates, they will surely become the Tour rivals for the post-Pogcacar era.

Paul Seixas (Decathlon CMA CGM)

The French teenager was the youngest debutant at the Tour for years, at age 19, and proved he is a generational talent by finishing fourth. He was 11:56 down on Pogačar but was only 24 seconds down on Del Toro until cracking on the second stage to L'Alpe d'Huez.

Seixas faces some big decisions about his future team in August but whoever he rides he will be a Tour contender and also a French Tour contender.

Other GC riders to watch in 2027

2026 indicated the future for other GC contenders and it will be fascinating to see if Tom Pidcock (Pinarello-Q36.5) decides to target the Tour in 2027 and can perfect his preparation. Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost) was again the Tour supercombatif and could surely put up a GC challenge if he can enjoy a season without illness and injury.

Lidl-Trek face major change for 2027 but Juan Ayuso will have to live-up to the hype about his GC talents, otherwise Mattias Skjelmose will openly push for a Tour leadership role. We'll also be watching Florian Lipowitz's return, Lenny Martinez' development and Jarno Widar (Lotto Intermarché) in 2027, plus the long-term development of Lorenzo Finn (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) and his possible debut in the 2028 Tour.

The other jersey battles of the 2027 Tour

Pogačar has dominated the battle for the yellow jersey but fortunately the other jerseys have created interesting racing. We can only hope for the same in 2027.

Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) fought for every intermediate sprint to win the green points jersey and is the favourite for 2027. The big Dane can attack on hilly terrain and with the new points scales, a pure sprinter will have to win four stages and score points on other stages.

Carapaz won the polka-dot mountains jersey with a late charge in the Alps. Pogačar has dominated the distinctive jersey but rarely worn it. Hopefully ASO will shake up the mountains classification for 2027 like they did with the points classification for 2026, to entice more mountain attacks and reward the pure climbers.

A different peloton at the 2027 Tour

There is talk of budget caps, calls to reduce team sizes to just six riders instead of eight to break Pogačar and UAE's dominance but there will surely be 23 teams of eight riders in the 2027 Tour peloton.

The 18 WorldTour teams are likely to retain their places even if there are concerns about Picnic-PostNL's WorldTour status for 2027 and a host of other teams are looking for new title sponsors.

Some huge sponsors could invest in the sport but the likes of Movistar, Jayco AlUla, Visma-Lease a Bike and NSN are all desperate for extra funding.

Pinarello-Q36.5, Tudor and Cofidis are likely to again secure the automatic wildcard places to the 2027 Tour de France. TotalEnergies are looking for a new sponsor and if they fail, it could open the Tour doors to Unibet Rose Rockets, despite ASO conservative attitude and clear dislike for the young team.

We will know the 2027 Tour route in late October and the 2027 Tour teams early in the season. The Tour starts on July 2 in Edinburgh, as another blank page to fill with great racing, drama and discussions about Pogačar's greatness and his rivals.

Whatever happens and whoever emerges during the three weeks of racing, Cyclingnews will be there in 2027 with all the news, reports and live updates. Access the Cyclingnews app to follow the action on the go! Find out more.