UAE Tour 2023 route

Image 1 of 7

The UAE Tour takes place from the 20th to 26th February and takes in 7 stages across the United Arab Emirates.

UAE Tour - Everything you need to know, including the route, favourites and outsiders for the WorldTour race.

Join Cyclingnews' coverage of the UAE Tour Women with race reports, results, photo galleries, news and race analysis.

Stage 1

The 2023 UAE Tour begins as it did in 2021 from Al Dhafra Castle to Al Mirfa. It looks like a simple stage on paper with very few corners, but riders will have to be wary of crosswinds, especially on the open desert roads. This is where Lorena Wiebes took an emphatic victory ahead of her former lead-out rider Charlotte Kool in stage 2 of the inaugural UAE Tour Women last week. If the wind doesn't break the bunch into echelons, this should be a showdown of the peloton’s finest sprinters.

Stage 2

Stage 2 gives the teams a chance to show off the work they put in during the winter with a team time trial on a flat, wide and simple parcours. The stage starts and finishes in Khalifa Port and the only technical parts come with two 180° turns. The average speeds should be very high and the leader’s jersey will almost certainly be moving away from the sprinters, as the best-equipped teams for a time trial will be those containing general classification contenders. The 17.3km course will give teams who are most adept at the discipline an opportunity to create big gaps before the first mountain stage.

Stage 3

The GC riders will either be pleased with the previous day's performance or left wanting more, and the third stage from Umbrella Beach Al Fujairah to Jebel Jais gives them the chance to make amends. Jebel Jais is 19km in length but only has an average gradient of 5.6% which allows some heavier riders to stay with the pure climbers, with the steepest sections topping out at 9%. This has led to small group sprints at the top of the climb with the bonus seconds on the line becoming the most important gain. The last two winners up Jebel Jais were Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard.

Stage 4

Stage 4 will have the fast men excited again and gives us an early look into which team’s lead-out trains are firing on all cylinders. It will be a long 173.9km day in the saddle from Al Shindagha to Dubai Harbour however, the riders might not have to fear the crosswinds as much as they did on stage 1. Expect a less exciting run-in with an equally explosive sprint finish.

Stage 5

Stage 5 offers a similar opportunity for the plethora of other top-tier sprinters who are still itching to get their hands in the air at the finish. The 170km route from Al Marjan Island to the new finishing location Umm al Quwain is largely on straight, flat roads so should be relatively straightforward for the lead-out trains to stay organised. The roundabouts in the final few hundred metres are the only potential problem.

Stage 6

Stage 6 from Warner Bros. World Abu Dhabi to Abu Dhabi Breakwater is a finish we have seen before in the UAE, most recently in the UAE Tour women where Charlotte Kool slingshotted out of Lorena Wiebes’ slipstream to take her second victory of that race. The road veers to the left in the final few hundred metres, and Mark Cavendish used this feature in last year’s men’s race to legally cut off Danny van Poppel’s lead-out for Sam Bennett and hold off Jasper Philipsen for his first World Tour victory of that season. This is the last sprint shootout of the UAE Tour so there will be a considerable fight for positioning in the latter kilometres.

Stage 7

The final stage has become the classic mountain test of the UAE Tour, finishing on Jebel Hafeet after passing symbolic landmarks on the initial 143.4km. The 10km climb will be a defining point of the race and will be the last chance for those hopeful of winning the red jersey to make the difference. It will set the purest climbers apart from those who could survive on the less harsh gradients of Jebel Jais as its steepest sections are above 11% with the average closer to 7% making it hard enough for gaps to form. Despite this, there have been closely fought battles to the line on the last three occasions with Tadej Pogačar taking a hattrick of Jebel Hafeet stages in the process. We will likely see the best climbers at the race battle it out in a similar fashion but with Remco Evenepoel provisionally set to start the race, we could see someone arrive solo.