With the 111th edition of the Tour de France, the Tour de France 2024, due to start in Italy in just over a week's time, Tour de France organizer Amaury Sport Organisation yesterday announced that the Grand Départ of the Tour de France 2026 will take place in Barcelona, Spain 🇪🇸.

Few details have yet been announced, but let's take a quick look at what is now official for what will launch the festivities of the 113th edition of the Tour de France, the Tour de France 2026.

The Grand Départ of the Tour de France 2026 in Barcelona and Catalonia

The first stage of the 113th edition of the Tour de France 2026 will start on July 4, 2026, in Barcelona 🇪🇸 and will be one of two stages taking place in Catalonia (July 4 and 5, 2026), before departing from Spain for France on July 7, 2026.

No further details have yet been announced, but it's not hard to imagine that Girona will also feature on the Tour de France 2026 map, and that the race will escape Spain along the coast, unless it heads straight for the Pyrenees.

In its press release, the organizer stresses that this is the most southerly Grand Départ the Tour de France has ever seen. Indeed, until now, it was Porto-Vecchio in Corsica that was the southernmost town to have hosted the Grand Départ of the Grande Boucle (in 2013). Of course, the last Grand Départ of the Tour de France in Spain, that of the Tour de France 2023 in the Basque Country, was a little less southern too.

Of course, the organizer also looks back at the history of the Tour de France, and cycling more broadly, in Barcelona, where the Tour de France last passed through in 2009 (Thor Hushovd's victory in stage 9, which arrived in Barcelona from Girona, before setting off again the following day towards Andorra).

Before that, the Tour had already stopped in Barcelona, but further back in time, in 1965 and 1957:

• 1965: arrival from Ax-les-Thermes for stage 11 and departure of stage 12 towards Perpignan
• 1957: arrival from Perpignan for stage 15a and a time-trial stage in Barcelona on the same day, as well as departure for Ax-les-Thermes the following day

The video announcing the Grand Départ of the Tour de France 2026

Below is the official announcement video of the Grand Départ of the Tour de France 2026:

door Thomas Vergouwen
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this publication is published in: Tour de France | Tour de France 2026

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