Tour de France Femmes race director Marion Rousse has called the 2026 route "mischievous" after its unveiling on Thursday morning, with hilly stages galore and a Mont Ventoux debut on the menu for next August.
The fifth edition of the race will set off from its second foreign Grand Départ in Switzerland and riders will tackle an individual time trial for the first time since 2024 before a series of challenging hilly stages pack the second half of the nine-day race.
The queen stage is undoubtedly the Mont Ventoux summit finish on stage 7, while the eight classified climbs of stage 5 to Belleville-en-Beaujolais and four ascents of the Col d'Eze on the final day in Nice also stand out as major challenges.
Speaking to L'Equipe after the Tour de France Femmes route presentation in Paris, Rousse said that the "mischievous" and mentally challenging route features "pitfalls" on almost every stage.
"I think if I had to define my route, over these nine days of racing, it's that it's mischievous. There are pitfalls on practically every stage. There isn't a completely flat stage. Almost every day there's a climb," Rousse said.
"It's a Tour de France Femmes that will be very difficult to keep up with mentally. You'll have to be strong because in the final, there is often a series of difficulties."
After the 2025 Tour started in Brittany and raced across the centre of France before an Alpine finish in Châtel, the 2026 route is largely focussed on the southeast part of the country following a Swiss Grand Départ.
There's a single summit finish, but the route also features perhaps just one or two nailed-on sprint stages. Instead, the focus has been on making every day a challenge, with multiple stages offering up potential GC action.
"When you create your route, you imagine all sorts of scenarios in your head, but then you make your proposal and the runners decide," Rousse said, before highlighting the punchy potential of the Swiss start.
"Switzerland also allows us to create routes that are great right from the start, with this first stage arriving in Lausanne and the Côte de Saint-François, which is a first finish for puncheurs.
"We know that the Tour de France, for both men and women, is also a picture postcard. Switzerland is magnificent and also allows us to return to France very early on."
Stage 4 will see the return of the individual time trial after the 2025 route did away with the test against the clock. The 21km ride into Dijon is the first since 2024's 6.3km stage 3 in Rotterdam. It will be the longest time trial since the concluding stage of the 2023 race in Pau.
"The first big event for the leaders will be the 21km time trial in Dijon. A time trial we haven't seen for two years," Rousse said.
"It's true that we often avoid using a time trial, whether for the men's or the women's, because people don't like it as much. The audience is smaller and, above all, it can quickly 'freeze' the general classification.
"We created this time trial, but also imagined that there would be competitors like Marlen Reusser who could gain time on Demi Vollering and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot and that, as a result, they would have to reveal themselves earlier."
Mont Ventoux follows on stage 7 as the premier test for the GC hopefuls. The Giant of Provence will be tackled from Bédoin, meaning the riders will face 15.7km at 8.8% as another legendary climb is added to Tour de France Femmes history, following La Planche des Belles Filles, the Col du Tourmalet, L'Alpe d'Huez, and the Col de la Madeleine.
"This year, we'll arrive at the summit of Mont Ventoux. Our legendary summit," Rousse said. "Every year, we want to establish and introduce symbols that the girls, the competitors, can add to their list of legendary climbs that have also made history in the men's Tour."
Ventoux won't be the final test of the race, however, with the peloton continuing south towards Nice and a grand finale on the Col d'Eze, which features four times on what will no doubt be a hectic and fast-changing 99km final day.
"Nice, which is between the sea and the mountains, is a great place to have fun with a really unpredictable, really hilly course," Rousse said.
"It's a bit like fireworks, and that's what we wanted to reproduce in our Tour de France Femmes. This last stage around Nice, with four ascents of the Col d'Eze, won't have a single metre of flat terrain.
"The last variation, via the Col du Vinaigrier, is actually a slope of the Col d'Eze, with gradients of over 16%. It's going to be spectacular."
