2026 Giro d'Italia granted extra rest day by UCI for Bulgarian start

The Giro d’Italia has been granted an additional rest day in 2026 to facilitate a transfer to Italy after the Grande Partenza in Bulgaria.

It means the Giro will now start on Friday, May 8, a day earlier than initially planned, with the race transferring to Italy on the first rest day on Monday, May 11.

This will mark the second time in as many years that the Giro features three rest days due to a start in another country. Domestique understands that RCS Sport was recently granted a special derogation by the UCI to do so. The 2026 WorldTour calendar published on the UCI website has already been altered to reflect the change.

UCI rules state that WorldTour races may request an additional rest day to accommodate stages in another country, but only once every four years. The Giro, however, was already granted an extra rest day in 2022 due to its start in Budapest and again in 2025 due to its start in Albania.

The change in start date for the Giro serves as further confirmation that the race will start in Bulgaria after RCS Sport president Urbano Cairo indicated as much last month. 

The details of the Bulgarian Grande Partenza have not yet been presented, but Domestique understands that all three will be road stages. The opening stage is expected to finish in Burgas, on the Black Sea Coast, with Veliko Tarnovo and Sofia also in line to host finishes. 

After a lengthy transfer to Calabria on May 11, the Giro will resume on Italian roads with stage 4, which is expected to start in Catanzaro.

The 2026 Giro route will be presented in full in Rome on December 1, with clearer details beginning to emerge in reports in the Italian press. A return to Naples is all but certain, as well as a summit finish at the Blockhaus in the opening week.

It is expected that there will be a long time trial in the second week, though not necessarily in Barolo wine country as initially reported. The final days of the Giro will see a demanding Dolomite tappone over the Passo Giau on stage 19 ahead of a double ascent of Piancavallo on stage 20.

Although Milan remains in the running to host a stage finish earlier in the 2026 Giro, the grand finale will once again be a circuit race in Rome on stage 21 on May 31.

The configuration of the Giro route will be of considerable interest to Jonas Vingegaard (Visma | Lease a Bike) and Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), who have each expressed their openness to riding both the corsa rosa and the Tour de France in 2026.

In 2024, RCS Sport deliberately scaled back the total climbing on the course in a bid to make the Giro-Tour double more attractive. Tadej Pogacar duly made his debut at the race, and he proceeded to become the first man since the late Marco Pantani in 1998 to win the Giro and Tour in the same year.