The 2026 Tour de France starts in Barcelona on Saturday 4 July and covers 3,333km (2,071 miles), with a total of 54,450 metres of elevation gain, before it arrives in Paris just over three weeks later.
At 205km, Stage 13 from Dole to Belfort is the longest, while the Stage 1 team time trial covers only 19km.
The average stage length is 158.7km, or 98.6 miles.
21 stages
The modern Tour de France consists of 21 stages, typically with two rest days – one on the second and one on the third Monday after the start or, in French, the Grand Départ.
Tours usually start on the first Saturday in July and always finish on a Sunday. If the race begins outside mainland France, the start may be on a Friday rather than a Saturday, to allow an additional day for a transfer after the first three days of racing.
The distance covered by the 2026 Tour de France is fairly typical of recent editions. Last year’s race was planned to cover only 6km more than the 2026 Tour, although with 2,000 metres less climbing.
Tadej Pogačar won the 2025 race with a total race time of 76 hours and 32 seconds, at an average speed of 42.85km/h.
The time of Simone Consonni, the 160th and slowest rider to finish the race, was 81 hours, 52 minutes and 12 seconds – more than five hours behind Pogačar. No fewer than 24 riders abandoned the Tour before it reached Paris.
The first Tour de France and the longest
Race lengths have varied since the first Tour de France in 1903, which covered 2,428km. However, that Tour and its successor consisted of only six stages, so in 1903 stages averaged over 404km.
By 1906, the race had stretched to 4,545km over 13 stages – still an average of almost 350km per stage. At 5,745km, the 1926 race was the longest and consisted of 17 stages, averaging 338km in length.
Early Tours would finish one stage and start the next in the same location, while modern Tours often include transfers between start and end towns, so the race can now cover more areas of France with shorter total distances.
It can even start in another country without a land border with France, such as the 2027 Tour de France Grand Départ from the UK.
