• ‘Britain offers us a symbol that ties the races together’

• Tour de France Femmes will conclude on Puy de Dôme

The most ambitious Grand Départ in the long history of the Tour de France was unveiled in Paris on Thursday as the race organisers fleshed out the details of next summer’s men’s and women’s race starts in Edinburgh and Yorkshire.

Over six days of racing, Scotland, England’s Lake District and Peak District, Lancashire and Yorkshire, Wales and central London will be taken over by the snaking race caravan on a route that is expected to lure millions to the roadside.

Overall winner was uncertain until final climb – a world away from Slovenian’s dominance of men’s event

Demi Vollering’s second overall win in the Tour de France Femmes in Nice on Sunday was achieved after a heated dispute with Kasia Niewiadoma, but by the time the sun was setting on the Promenade des Anglais, the sisterhood that has always characterised this race had kicked back in.

On a final stage of high drama, the Dutchwoman erased the lingering controversy with an attacking win of the highest quality, further boosting the prestige of the long-dormant native cycling scene in a gutsy performance from her French‑sponsored FDJ United-Suez team.

• David Lappartient says selective night testing is justified

• ‘We always have suspicion in cycling, due to our past’

The UCI president, David Lappartient, has said there will “always be suspicion in cycling” and insisted this year’s men’s Tour de France was clean. Lappartient, speaking at the start of stage two of the Tour de France Femmes in Aigle, also said he supported night-time testing during races in “exceptional cases”.

Lappartient added that the absence of any positive test announcements by the International Testing Agency (ITA) indicated that last month’s men’s Tour was drug free. “The ITA never make a press release about negative results, only about positive results,” said Lappartient. “We didn’t see any press release in the Tour de France, so it seems there was nothing in the Tour.”

• Dutch sprinter makes it two from two in Geneva

• Her team still intend to sue UCI over Giro disqualification

The Dutch sprinter Lorena Wiebes took her second win in this year’s Tour de France Femmes in Geneva, further extending her overall lead in the nine-day race. Wiebes is proving untouchable in the sprint finishes and her turn of speed in the final 250 metres, on the lakeside finish of the Quai du Mont-Blanc, reduced her rivals to onlookers.

Lone breakaway Riejanne Markus had led by more than half a minute on the flat approach to Geneva and maintained that advantage into the final 5km, even with the whole peloton giving chase. But as the kilometres clicked down, the peloton clawed its way back, eclipsing Markus in the last 500 metres, before Wiebes made her inevitable surge to take yet another sprint win.

Dutch rider completed the set of Grand Tours by winning the Giro and is set on claiming a second title in France

French pulses were set racing by Pauline-Ferrand Prévot’s win in the 2025 Tour de France Femmes, but the pragmatic choice of favourite for this year’s race, which begins in Lausanne on Saturday, is Demi Vollering.

The 29-year old Dutch rider, leader of the FDJ United-Suez team and the first €1m athlete in women’s racing, combines outstanding results – this year she completed a grand slam of all three of Europe’s Grand Tours – with an outspoken personality.

Oscar Onley’s pre-race injury presaged three bleak weeks and new director of racing knows he has his work cut out

Crashes, punctures and injuries ensured that the 2026 Tour de France campaign was one of the worst for the beleaguered Netcompany Ineos team. From the first stage, when Dave Brailsford’s team came close to winning the team time trial in Montjuic, the 2026 Tour was, in the words of their director of racing, Geraint Thomas, “tough going”.

Thomas, who has taken Brailsford’s place as the team’s frontman, said: “I’m happy to not be racing any more, because I suffered way too much. But it’s good to still be involved in the nitty‑gritty of it.”

Pete Goding has been photographing the Tour de France for 20 years – here he gives an insight into what it’s been like to document this year’s race

Twenty Tours de France. It seems faintly ridiculous when I write it down. My first was the year Lance Armstrong’s carefully constructed empire was beginning to wobble. I photographed him circling the Champs-Élysées with a film SLR, blissfully unaware that neither film cameras nor Armstrong’s reputation would age particularly well.

Today I’m back where it all began, sitting outside a cafe a stone’s throw from Place de la Concorde nursing a café crème while Paris carries on entirely oblivious. A couple laugh over breakfast. Someone walks an exceptionally pampered poodle. A waiter in a waistcoat unsuccessfully attempts to persuade two tourists that vodka is an acceptable accompaniment to a croissant. In a few hours the world’s biggest bike race will thunder through these streets. Right now, it’s just another Sunday morning.

• Slovene has quickly drawn level with the greats

• Paul Seixas acknowledges Pogacar’s dominance

Tadej Pogacar woke up in Paris on Monday as the fastest and the youngest cyclist to win five Tours de France. The 27-year-old Slovene took his fifth overall victory on the Champs Élysées on Sunday evening in a thrilling final stage won by Mathieu van der Poel.

Pogacar is level with Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Induráin and he is expected to continue racing in pursuit of a record-breaking sixth win.

• Slovene becomes fifth rider to win five Tours

• Eddy Merckx: ‘He’ll soon break our record’

Tadej Pogacar took a record-equalling fifth win in the Tour de France on Sunday, joining Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Induráin in the canon of the Tour’s most successful cyclists. In a thrilling finale to the Tour, Mathieu van der Poel took his second stage win of the race on the Champs-Élysées, fending off the pursuing pack of sprinters by a tyre’s width, after breaking clear with Pogacar on the final climb of the Butte de Montmartre.

Merckx, widely considered the greatest-ever cyclist because of the breadth of his achievements beyond the Tour itself, believes that Pogacar will now go on to win a sixth Tour. “I don’t think he’ll be content just to draw level with me and the other ­champions,” the 81-year-old Belgian said. “He’ll soon break our record for Tour victories.”

• Four-time victor holds huge lead after Alpe d’Huez

• Final stage to be shortened due to wildfires elsewhere

Tadej Pogacar’s likely victory parade on the streets of Paris will come sooner on Sunday after the final stage of the Tour de France was shortened due to wildfires elsewhere in France. The stage will now be only 89km long and will start on the Champs-Élysées, where two laps of the avenue will be followed by the now traditional circuits of the Butte Montmartre.

In a joint statement with the prefecture police, the Tour organiser, ASO, said: “The ministry of the interior has decided to redeploy a portion of the internal security forces initially mobilised for the final stage of the Tour de France, in order to reinforce the response efforts in the areas affected by the wildfires.”

Stage 20 runs for brutal 170.9km and concludes at Ale d’Huez
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148km to go You have to love Pedersen. He’s trying to bridge across to the peloton and looks like he’s swallowed a mouthful of wasps. Pure pain. What a rider.

149km to go Pedersen’s little batch of riders are hanging around, they’re only 25secs behind the peloton. With 12km to go to the top of this climb, Pedersen could get back on or even aim to catch the main group on the descent to make a bid for the intermediate sprint.

• Slovenian only second man to win in yellow on mountain

• Leader opens up gap of more than seven minutes

Tadej Pogacar put further distance between himself and his last remaining rivals, winning the Alpe d’Huez stage of the Tour de France and extending his overall lead to more than seven minutes.

There was a brutal inevitability about the defending Tour champion’s win on the legendary climb of the Alpe, despite all the rumours of illness and gastric problems within his UAE Emirates XRG team.

Tadej Pogacar broke the record for the fastest Alpe d’Huez ascent, earning a dominant stage win and extending his GC lead beyond seven minutes

127km to go No rest for the wicked, we’re straight on to the category Col Bayard, a 4.8km drag at 7.2%.

There’s Christian Prudhomme popping out of the sunroof and waving his little yellow flag, we’re off.

• Richard Carapaz roars clear of breakaway to win stage 18

• McNulty abandons, Wellens and Vermeersch struggle

Richard Carapaz won stage 18 of the Tour de France after a breakaway group of six riders duelled their way to the winter sports station at Orcières-Merlette, but uncertainty surrounds the health of race leader Tadej Pogacar’s UAE Team Emirates XRG, which has been swept by a virus since Monday’s rest day.

After Adam Yates’s stage-long calvary on the road to Voiron, Pogacar’s team was further weakened by the abandonment of his American colleague, Brandon McNulty, who quit the Tour with 21km of Thursday’s stage remaining.

Ecuadorian takes impressive victory at Orcières-Merlette as Tadej Pogacar maintains overall lead despite illness concerns in his team

161km to go The five riders up the road are Mathis le Berre (TotalEnergies), Jonas Abrahamsen (Uno-X Mobility), Nikolya Vinokurov, Aaron Gate (XDS Astana) and Lewis Askey (NSN). They managed to get 45secs on the main bunch but that is about to disappear rapidly.

174km to go Five riders have broken away and churned out a lead of around 20 seconds. That is unlikely to last when they hit Côte d’Engins shortly.

• Home rider Seixas yet to be tested at night, unlike some rivals

• Authorities deny French doping agency plays role in who is tested

Anti-doping authorities at the Tour de France have rejected accusations of preferential treatment towards Paul Seixas, the teenage French rider and home favourite who is placed fourth overall.

Seixas and his Decathlon CMA CGM team were tested, with the rest of the peloton, on Monday evening as part of the biological passport testing programme, but the 19-year-old has not yet been subjected to the nocturnal test that both the race leader Tadej Pogacar and the now-withdrawn Jonas Vingegaard underwent.