Barcelona continues to impose its name as a destination for major sporting events and it has now been confirmed that the city will host the start of the Tour de France 2026. The Grand Départ of the most important cycling race in the world will take place in the Catalan capital for the first time in its history and it is planned that a total of three stages will be contested within Catalan territory.
Barcelona, a capital of sport
Jaume Collboni, mayor of Barcelona, showed his great pleasure at being able to announce this historic agreement: "It is a dream come true, and once again reinforces the role of the city of Barcelona as an international capital of sport."
And this latest sporting coup for Barcelona arrives as the city has already been the start of last year's Vuelta a España, the Spanish cycling tour, with the Catalan capital this year hosting the major yachting event of the America's Cup, with Formula 1 and the motorcycling championship, among many other great events that have chosen the Catalan capital as an important part of their sports competition. In addition, Collboni also added that "we are negotiating that there will be three stages in Catalan territory" and that it will involve an expenditure of "around 7 million euros".
"Barcelona will be the only city in the world that has been able to host the Olympic Games, been a venue for the football World Cup, the America's Cup of yachting and the Tour de France," pointed out a smiling Collboni who was proud to make this announcement from the ceremonial Saló de Cent at Barcelona city hall. Christian Prudhomme, the general director of the Tour de France, assured that "it will be a very prestigious start", highlighting that Catalonia has "a formidable landscape". And the cycling director also wanted to add that the mountain of Montjuïc will be important.
"More than a race" says Le Tour de France's video announcing the Grand Départ 2026 by paraphrasing the old Barça slogan, "More than a club" - even as unlikely a cycling fan as Salvador Dalí gets a mention in the video. From July 4th to 6th, 2026, cycling fans in Barcelona and Catalonia can expect three exciting days.
The Tour de France has not pedalled through Barcelona since 2009
Although the calendar and the route have not yet been defined, it is expected that this 2026 Tour de France will begin in Barcelona on Saturday, July 4th, and that on the 5th and 6th the stages will also cover Catalan territory. That year the final stage will, as usual, be in Paris on July 26th.
We remember that the Tour de France's previous passage through Barcelona was in 2009, when that sixth stage left Girona and ended in Barcelona with the victory of the Norwegian sprinter Thor Hushovd. The next day the race left the Catalan capital and set course for Andorra. Going back even further, the previous visit by the Tour to Barcelona was in 1965.
Thus, Barcelona will take protagonism at the start of the 2026 Tour de France, seventeen years after the last time the Tour reached the Catalan capital, in one of the years when the race's itinerary through the Pyrenees took a dip down to explore the territory to the south. But in two year's time, the Grand Départ will take place in Barcelona, following in the tradition of Florence, Bilbao, Copenhagen, Brussels, Düsseldorf, Utrecht and Leeds which have been the starting point for the Tour de France in recent years.