Tour de France Countdown

Tour de France records

Tour de France champions

How the 2026 Tour finished

Tadej Pogačar won again, and this one put him in the record books: a fifth Tour de France, level with Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain, and nobody has ever won six. He reached Paris on July 26 with 6 minutes 26 seconds in hand over Remco Evenepoel, whose second place was the Belgian's best finish at the Tour. Isaac del Toro was third at 9:42 and took the white jersey for best young rider on his debut Tour. Mads Pedersen won the green points jersey and Richard Carapaz the polka dots in the mountains. The 2026 race began with a team time trial in Barcelona on July 4 — the Grand Départ's first visit to Spain since 2023.

Invented to sell newspapers

The Tour was created in 1903 as a circulation stunt by the sports paper L'Auto — whose pages were yellow, which is why the leader's jersey is too. The stunt outlived the newspaper by 80 years and counting.

The scale of it

Riders climb the equivalent of several Everests across the Alps and Pyrenees, burn 5,000–7,000 calories a day, and race for three weeks with two rest days. Roughly 10–12 million spectators line the roads — the largest live audience of any annual sporting event.

Quick facts

• Created in 1903 to sell a yellow-paged newspaper — hence the yellow jersey
• 2027 opens with a Grand Départ in Edinburgh
• About 3,500 km over 21 stages in 23 days
• Draws 10+ million roadside spectators — the biggest live crowd in sport

How to watch Tour de France

The Tour de France is a three-week, roughly 21-stage race held every July across France (with occasional starts abroad). In the United States, Peacock is the exclusive live streaming home of the race through 2029, with select stages simulcast on NBC; most other countries carry it on their national broadcaster or a dedicated sports streaming service.