Tour de France Femmes 2025

The 2025 Tour de France Femmes will start in Vannes on July 26 and conclude in Châtel on August 3. The fourth edition of the race will cover a total of 1,165km on its nine stages, which take the peloton from Brittany across France and into the Alps.

Race director Marion Rousse has described the 2025 route as harder and longer than previous editions of the race.

The Grand Départ is in the cycling heartland of Brittany and the opening stage is a hilly one from Vannes to Plumelec. Three flatter days follow, with finishes in Quimper, Angers and Poitiers.

The Tour de France Femmes shifts gear on stage 5 with a medium mountain stage from Futuroscope to Guéret. The climbing continues on stage 6 through the Massif Central to Ambert.

There is no time trial on a 2025 route that is designed for the climbers. The race hits the Alps on stage 7, with the Col du Granier preceding a fast descent into Chambéry.

The queen stage of the Tour de France Femmes comes on the penultimate day, with the climbs of Col de Plainpalais and Col du Frêne followed by a summit finish on the Col de la Madeleine, some 2,000m above sea level.

The grand finale takes place in the Haute-Savoie, with the Col du Joux Plane and Col du Corbier on the menu ahead of the finish in Châtel.

Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM) is the defending champion after she claimed a dramatic Tour de France Femmes victory in 2024. 

The favourite is Demi Vollering (FDJ-Suez), who won La Vuelta Femenina in May. Vollering won the Tour de France Femmes in 2023, and she missed on a repeat win by just four seconds last year.

Other contenders include Gaia Realini (Lidl-Trek), Elisa Longo Borghini (Lidl-Trek) and Pauliena Rooijakkers (Fenix-Deceuninck), who placed a surprising third in 2024.

World champion Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx-Protime) placed second overall on her last Tour de France Femmes appearance in 2023. She should shine again here, though the mountainous finale might play against her.

Two riders making a return to the road this season will add considerably to the narrative. Anna van der Breggen (SD Worx-Protime) came out of retirement this season after three years as a directeur sportif, while Paris 2024 Olympics mountain bike champion Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (Visma-Lease a Bike) is back on the road after a long hiatus. After winning Paris-Roubaix in April, the Tour de France Femmes is her next target.

Last year’s green jersey Marianne Vos (Visma-Lease a Bike) will expect to be to the fore once again, while Charlotte Kool (Picnic-PostNL) and Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime) will feature prominently in the bunch sprints.

American Olympic champions Chloé Dygert (Canyon-SRAM) and Kristen Faulkner (EF Education-Oatly) will target stage wins across the nine days.

The Tour de France Femmes is one of cycling’s three Grand Tours, alongside May’s La Vuelta Femenina and July’s Giro d’Italia Women. The current iteration of the Tour de France Femmes began in 2022, though the first Tour de France Féminin took place in 1984 and endured for the remainder of the 1980s. 

After Tour de France organiser ASO withdrew its backing, an alternative known as the Tour Cycliste Féminin (later named Grande Boucle Féminine Internationale) was established, but the race ceased in 2009.

In 2014, ASO organised La Course by Le Tour de France in response to a petition calling for a women's Tour de France. That event ran until 2021, before ASO finally unveiled the revamped Tour de France Femmes, with Annemiek van Vleuten winning the first edition in 2022.

There are 22 teams in the 2025 Tour de France Femmes, each with seven riders. The 18 WorldTour teams are joined in the peloton by five wildcard teams.

The overall winner of the Tour de France is the rider who covers the nine stages and 1,165km total distance in the quickest cumulative time. The overall leader each day wears the yellow jersey, or maillot jaune.

The best young rider – open to competitors under the age of 23 – wears the white jersey, or maillot blanc. 

The points classification sees riders earn points based on their position in each stage and in intermediate sprints, with the leader wearing the green jersey, or maillot vert.

The king of the mountains classification sees rider earn points based on their positions on selected climbs, with the leader wearing the polka-dot jersey, or maillot à pois.

The team classification is based on the general classification times of the first three riders of each team on each stage, with the leading team denoted by wearing yellow race numbers and helmets.

On each road stage, there is a prize awarded to the most aggressive or courageous rider – the Prix de la Combativité – and the rider wears a red race number the following day. At the end of the Tour, the rider judged to be the most aggressive of the entire race is awarded the Super Combativity prize.