The Tour de France Femmes may still be eight months away, but with the route for the 2026 race announced on Thursday, the preparations and anticipation have already begun. It may officially be the off-season, but anyone who wants to win the yellow jersey will be planning now what they're going to do in the coming months to target next summer's nine-stage route.
With an individual time trial, an ascent of Mont Ventoux and a wealth of other stages of radically varying type and difficulty all to tackle, the 2026 Tour de France Femmes looks like one of the hardest yet. What's certain is the potential winner will need considerable all-round strength to be in a position to claim the yellow jersey.
With that in mind, who are the riders who will already be starting their campaign to win the Tour? And who can already be counted among the favourites to contend for the victory? It may still be months away, but it's never too early to look at the power ranking of the contenders, which is exactly what we're doing today.
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From previous winners to new stand-out riders from 2025, here are our early contenders to win the 2026 Tour de France Femmes.
Demi Vollering (FDJ-Suez)
Demi Vollering (Image credit: Getty Images)
Though she's been beaten the last two years, Demi Vollering will be looking at the route for the 2026 Tour and thinking that next year is definitely her time to return to the top step of the podium. Pauline Ferrand-Prévot may have out-climbed her to victory this year, but the addition of a time trial really plays into Vollering's hands for 2026, and she's historically better in the medium mountains, too. Ventoux will be an all-out fight, but Vollering is the more well-rounded rider for the rest of the race.
The Dutch rider had an amazing 2025, topping the best rider rankings at the end of the year, and she won plenty of races, but missed out on her big goals. If she wants to win the Tour next year, she might want to think about following in Ferrand-Prévot's footsteps and actually racing less to spend more time focusing on those major objectives. If she comes into the 2026 Tour in shape and motivated, the course offers an excellent chance for Demi Vollering to claim yellow for the first time since 2023.
The winner of this year's race, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot has to be joint favourite for victory next year too. The Frenchwoman only returned to road racing full-time in 2025, and set a goal of winning the Tour within three years, but did it at the first time of asking this summer. If this is how good she can be less than a year into her return, imagine how good she might be with 18 months of road racing under her belt.
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Ferrand-Prévot's strength this year came in the high mountains, so she will be looking at Mont Ventoux as a great opportunity. Her time trialing is a bit more of an unknown – she didn't race a single ITT in 2025 – so that will be something she will be working on between now and next July. One drawback for the Frenchwoman may be that she started her off-season with ankle surgery, so her return to training is going to be a little delayed. Assuming her ankle doesn't continue to trouble her, she'll be hoping a few weeks missed won't make a big difference in half a year's time.
Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney has finished on the podium of every single Tour de France Femmes so far, including winning the 2024 edition, and she'll be hoping to keep that streak up in 2026. The Polish rider isn't a prolific winner, but she's extremely consistent, and that's exactly what you need to do well at the Tour, particularly now it's been extended to nine days.
Like Ferrand-Prévot, Niewiadoma-Phinney has some work to do on her TT, but she should do well on the medium-difficulty stages that make up much of the second half of the race. She's a rider who always pulls out her best performances at the biggest races, and next year should be no different.
Marlen Reusser (Movistar)
Marlen Reusser (Image credit: Getty Images)
Marlen Reusser had her best year of GC racing yet in 2025, finishing second overall at both the Giro d'Italia and Vuelta Femenina, but sickness took her out on the first stage of the Tour, meaning we haven't got to see her in action at that race since 2023. In that edition, she finished 28th, but was working as a domestique for Vollering, and not really fully in her GC era yet.
In 2026, a very different Marlen Reusser will return to the Tour, as she's proven her ability to contend for the title in Grand Tours, and she's also the sole leader at Movistar now, rather than lower down the pecking order at SD Worx-Protime. The race starts in her home country of Switzerland, too, which will add some motivation, and the stage 4 time trial surely looks appealing to the TT world champion.
Anna van der Breggen / Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx-Protime)
Anna Van Der Breggen of Netherlands and Lotte Kopecky of Belgium (Image credit: Getty Images)
SD Worx-Protime had a slightly disappointing 2025 Tour, failing to place a rider in the top 10, so they will be hoping to turn that around in 2026, but the question is: with who? Multiple Grand Tour winner Anna van der Breggen returned to racing in 2025, but didn't quite have the success of Ferrand-Prévot, though it wasn't disastrous either. She finished third at the Vuelta, sixth at the Giro, and 11th at the Tour, so the signs are there. The hard climbs and time trial should be good for Van der Breggen, and with an extra year of racing and adapting under her belt, she should be thinking about a podium next summer.
However, there's also the question of Lotte Kopecky, who had an injury-affected 2025 but has long been threatening to become a proper GC rider, specifically at the Tour. She finished second at the race in 2023, and second at the Giro in 2024, but hasn't yet returned for a full GC offensive in France yet. Could 2026 be the year? Hopefully, yes, but with the amount of climbing – and the growing number of GC specialists in the peloton – Kopecky will have to take a real step up if she wants to repeat her previous Grand Tour highs.
Elisa Longo Borghini / Pauliena Rooijakkers (UAE Team ADQ)
Elisa Longo Borghini (Image credit: Getty Images)
Elisa Longo Borghini has focused on the Giro d'Italia the last few years, and had a bit of an unlucky relationship with the Tour – she hasn't finished an edition since the first in 2022 – but she's won two pink jerseys in a row now, and she must be getting tempted to go for yellow at some point. The lure of Ventoux would be an added pull, and if Longo Borghini could tear herself away from her home Grand Tour for 2026, she could be a serious contender for the win.
If Longo Borghini sticks to the Giro, though, UAE Team ADQ will be able to rely on new signing for 2026, Pauliena Rooijakkers. She finished third at the Tour in 2024 and ninth this year, and she's a really consistent GC rider, particularly when the routes hit the high mountains. She's an underrated rider but a great signing for UAE that seriously strengthens their stage racing contingent.
Niamh Fisher-Black (Lidl-Trek)
Niamh Fisher-Black (Image credit: Getty Images)
Free from the SD Worx-Protime multi-leadership approach, Niamh Fisher-Black had more chances for herself in 2025, and turned that into fifth overall at the Tour de France Femmes. Her recent silver medal at the World Championships will have boosted her confidence further, too, and she will be looking ahead to next July thinking she can at least match or better fifth from this year. A pure climber, she'll thrive in the mountains, but will have to work on the time trial to make sure she doesn't lose too much ground there.
Sarah Gigante (AG Insurance-Soudal)
Sarah Gigante (Image credit: Getty Images)
Sarah Gigante is injured right now, but she had a great Tour in 2025, and the route for 2026 will surely be providing some great motivation to get back to her best for July 2026. The Australian had an amazing summer this year, finishing third overall at the Giro having won two stages, and then going straight to France where she didn't take a stage but finished sixth overall. Perhaps the unluckiest rider in the peloton, her positive streak came to a brutal end when she broke her femur in August, but she still has plenty of time to build back to her best before the Tour. Given her performances in 2025, AG Insurance-Soudal should have the faith to back her as their leader.
Puck Pieterse (Fenix-Deceuninck)
Puck Pieterse (Image credit: Getty Images)
Compared to her breakout ride in 2024, Puck Pieterse had a slightly quieter performance at the Tour in 2025, after perhaps going a bit too hard in her preparation, but she will have learnt from that for 2026 and will be hoping to continue her GC development in next year's race. At the moment, Pieterse still balances road racing against mountain biking, but has been upping her road days each year, and clearly has the ability to do well at the Tour. With Rooijakkers moving on, Fenix-Deceuninck will likely rely a little more on Pieterse next year, and she will be hoping to take a step up in her Grand Tour ambitions.
Matilda is an NCTJ-qualified journalist based in the UK who joined Cyclingnews in March 2025. Prior to that, she worked as the Racing News Editor at GCN, and extensively as a freelancer contributing to Cyclingnews, Cycling Weekly, Velo, Rouleur, Escape Collective, Red Bull and more. She has reported on the ground at all of the biggest events on the calendar, including the men's and women's Tours de France, the Giro d'Italia, the Vuelta a Espana, the Spring Classics and the World Championships. She has particular experience and expertise in women's cycling, and women's sport in general. She is a graduate of modern languages and sports journalism.
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