And so we come to the final stage of this year's Tour, with its champagne sipping and photo ops.
However, rather than ending with a drag race on the Champs-Élysées, this year the organisers have added in three trips up the Butte Montmartre to pulverise the sprinters' legs.
Will it lead to a shake-up of the usual mass sprint?
Stage 21: Mantes-la-Ville > Paris
- Date: 27 July
- Distance: 132.3km
- Elevation gain: 1,100m
- Stage type: Flat
Stage profile
Stage map
Many have called for the Paris finale to be shaken up, either with a move away from the city or to change the processional stage into something more competitive.
If last year’s time trial finish in Nice – a necessity because of the Olympics in Paris – proved a bit of a damp squib, it’s only because Tadej Pogačar was in such an unassailable position. Anywhere would have been dull.
The race returns to finish in the French capital once more in 2025, but this year takes in the Butte Montmartre climb – last seen in cycling circles on the Olympic route in 2024.
It’s always one of the most thrilling sights of the season to witness the peloton bouldering into Paris on its best-known street, the Champs-Élysées. The Butte Montmartre may just shake up the usual mass sprint and allow a solo or group breakaway to steal the show. That hasn't happened on the Champs-Élysées since 2005, when Alexander Vinokourov took the win.
“A return to both tradition and to the Champs-Élysées… after Nice stepped in for the capital during the Olympics last summer, the Tour will return to Paris,” says race director Christian Prudhomme.
“And we’ll be celebrating the 50th anniversary of both the first finish on the Champs-Élysées and Bernard Thévenet’s first overall victory. That was in 1975. Happy anniversary!”
More on the Tour de France 2025
- How to watch the 2025 Tour de France
- Tour de France bikes 2025: who’s riding what?
- Buy the official 2025 Tour de France Guide now!
- BikeRadar's Tour de France hub
The Parisian Sound Factory
Mantes-la-Ville, the stage's start point to the west of Paris, was established as a centre of the manufacture of wind instruments by Louis XIV and still hosts three instrument makers. Its music scene includes the Usine à Sons – the Sound Factory – with studios, concerts and more.
Next door, Mantes-la-Jolie sits on the Seine, while Mantes-la-Ville is at the confluence of the Seine and its Vaucouleurs tributary. Both are bisected by the A13 autoroute between Paris and Normandy and the town hosted the first stage of Paris-Nice in 2022.
One to watch: Julian Alaphilippe
When the 2024 Olympic road race took on the Butte Montmartre, Remco Evenepoel escaped to the gold-medal win. Evenepoel abandoned the 2025 Tour de France on stage 14, but Julian Alaphilippe has won the World Championships twice in the past in similar fashion.
If he succeeded, he'd be the first Frenchman to win on the Champs-Élysées since Jean-Patrick Nazon in 2003.
