While the Grand Départ of the Tour de France 2026 was already announced to take place in Barcelona in June 2024, it's only this week that the details of the stages that make up this Grand Départ of the Tour de France 2026 have been announced!

This will be the 3rd Grand Départ of the Tour de France in Spain, but the first in Barcelona 🇪🇸. Before discovering these stages in full detail on OpenStreetMap maps on velowire.com, I'd like to give you a short preview below, with maps and stage profiles in images.

The Grand Départ of the Tour de France 2026 in Barcelona

It's been some time since a city has had its name associated with a Grand Départ of the Tour de France, as in recent years it's more often departments, regions or even entire countries that choose to host the Grand Départ of the Grande Boucle, for communication reasons but often also for financial reasons. In 2026, however, it will be the city of Barcelona that hosts the Grand Départ of the Tour de France 2026. Spain 🇪🇸 has hosted the Grand Départ of the Tour de France twice before:

• in 1992 in San Sebastian
• in 2023 in Bilbao (Basque Country)

Barcelona has hosted the Tour de France on three previous occasions:

• in 1957 for the finish of stage 15a from Perpignan and for stage 15b, a time-trial on the Circuit de Montjuïc
• in 1965 for the finish of stage 11 from Ax-les-Thermes
• in 2009 for the finish of stage 6 from Girona.

The city is of course also partnering with the Catalonia region to host the Grand Départ of the Tour de France 2026, but there was a clear choice to host the whole event in a fairly concentrated area around the city of Barcelona 🇪🇸.

The program for the Grand Départ of the Tour de France 2026 in Barcelona

The city of Barcelona 🇪🇸 will see the entire Tour de France circus officially disembark on Wednesday, July 1, 2026, and on Monday, July 6, 2026, the Tour de France 2026 will leave Spain for an officially unknown destination somewhere in France. Here's the program for the Grand Départ of the Tour de France 2026:

• Wednesday, July 1, 2026: opening of the welcome desk and press center at the Palau Sant Jordi in Barcelona
• Thursday July 2, 2026: presentation of the Tour de France 2026 teams
• Saturday, July 4, 2026 - 1/ Barcelona > Barcelona - team time trial - 19.7 km
• Sunday, July 5, 2026 - 2/ Tarragona > Barcelona - 178 km
• Monday, July 6, 2026 - 3/ Granollers > ???

1/ Saturday, July 4, 2026 - Barcelona > Barcelona - team time trial - 19.7 km

The very first stage of the Tour de France 2026 will be a team time trial. It's precisely this "concentrated" aspect of the Grand Départ of the Tour de France 2026 that makes it possible to organize a team time trial as the opening stage, and ... that's a first for the Tour de France!

Although this is the 50th team time trial in the history of the Tour de France (in some years there have even been several stages in the form of team time trials), the first having taken place in 1935 and the last in 2019, in Brussels, never before had the Grand Départ begun in this form (in 1971 there was a prologue in the form of a team time-trial, but its classification only counted towards the team classification, the riders of the first 3 teams classified in the same time as the first rider of their team only being credited with 20", 10" and 5" bonuses).

The stage starts at the Fórum and follows the coastline to the Port Olímpic, then follows much the same route in the opposite direction in the parallel street, before entering the city of Barcelona further and repeating the route in the same direction a few blocks further on, past the Sagrada Família. The teams then head for Plaça d'Espanya, where the climb up the famous Côte de Montjuïc (1.1 km at 5.1%) begins. 2 kilometers after this, they begin the final climb of this stage, towards the finish at the top of the Côte du Stade Olympique (800 m at 7%).

A rather unusual course for a team time-trial with these difficulties, which would potentially make some teams wait to find out their time if we were on the logic of time taken from the 5th rider. On this stage of the Tour de France 2026, however, the logic will be quite different, since team times for the stage classification will be taken from the first rider to cross the line... whereas for the general classification, it will be the individual times of each rider that count.

Below you'll find the map and profile of the first stage of the Tour de France 2026:

2/ Sunday, July 5, 2026 - Tarragona > Barcelona - 178 km

The second stage of the Tour de France 2026 starts in Tarragona and will have a flat (well, almost flat) first half along the coast, but as it heads inland, things get tougher. They'll have the Côte de Begues to climb (6.1 km at 6.5%) and then a little further on the Côte de Santa Creu d'Olorda (8.4 km at 4.5%).

In the final part of the stage, they will follow the same sequence as the previous day's team time-trial (but not exactly the same way, since each of the climbs is accessed from the other side), with the Côte du château de Montjuïc (1.6 km at 9.3%) and the Côte du Stade Olympique (600 m at 7%) .... except that this time they're on the final circuit of this stage, which they'll have to complete no less than 3 times, so they'll have to climb these two sides three times! As on the previous day, the finish in Barcelona takes place at the top of the last climb.

Below you'll find the map and profile of the second stage of the Tour de France 2026:

3/ Monday July 6, 2026 - Granollers > ??? - ??? km

The official starting point for stage 3 is Granollers, southeast of Barcelona. We also know that the stage covers just over a hundred kilometers in Spain and will finish on the other side of the Pyrenees, in France. To be more precise, the organizers of the Tour de France have not yet announced any details of the finish of this 3rd stage of the Tour de France 2026, but several candidates already seem to be in the running, and the rumours are already flying thick and fast...

In particular, ici Pyrénées-Orientales (France Bleu) mentions a possible finish in the Pyrénées-Orientales region, with Les Angles in particular rumored to be a candidate, but nothing has yet been confirmed.

L'Indépendant, for its part, mentions another possibility with the Rousillon plain, in other words a commune near Perpignan, the name of which has not yet been leaked. From a route point of view (distance and difficulty), this seems almost more likely than the Pyrénées Orientales.

The official announcement of the complete route of the Tour de France 2026

The ici Pyrénées Orientales article also mentions the date on which the complete route of the Tour de France 2026 will be officially announced, which will be Thursday, October 23, 2025. Before that, of course, you can find out how the route of the Tour de France 2026 is shaping up based on rumours on velowire.com!

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

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