Analysing the 2026 Tour de France favourites

Jonas Vingegaard has enjoyed his clearest run since 2023 and Paul Seixas has seemed to improve by the day, and yet Tadej Pogačar remains the runaway favourite to win a record-equalling fifth Tour de France in July.

Even by Pogačar’s exalted standards, his body of work in 2026 has been astonishing. His only defeat so far came at the hands of Wout van Aert in a tumultuous edition of Paris-Roubaix. Apart from that near miss, Pogačar has had a more or less perfect run. 

After victories at Strade Bianche, Milan-Sanremo, the Tour of Flanders and Liège-Bastogne-Liège, he finally turned his attention to stage racing, winning four stages and the overall at the Tour de Romandie. 

That triumph was all the more stunning given that Pogačar was, by his own telling, a couple of kilos off his preferred stage racing weight. He spent May training at altitude in Sierra Nevada and showed the fruits of those labours on the first day of the Tour de Suisse, casually soloing clear with 69km to go to put the GC to bed before the race had truly started.

The rest of the race was an exhibition. On this form, and even against the lofty opposition below, the Tour might prove to be another procession.

And yet the Nadal to Pogačar’s Federer is still here. It seems a distant memory now, but there were question marks over Vingegaard as the season began, amid the departure of coach Tim Van Heemskerk, the abrupt retirement of Simon Yates and the crash and illness that caused the Dane to miss the UAE Tour. 

The answers have followed, firmly and repeatedly, in the months since. Vingegaard was impressive in mastering the conditions and allcomers at Paris-Nice and imperious in sweeping aside all opposition at the Volta a Catalunya. Above all, he was unimpeachable at the Giro d’Italia, winning five stages and cruising to overall victory to complete a full set of Grand Tour victories. 

Like Pogačar in 2024, Vingegaard won the Giro without seeming to go especially deep into his reservoirs, and subdued time trial aside, there were no alarms and no surprise across his three weeks in Italy. 

The two-time Tour champion has been training at Tignes in recent weeks, and all indications are that he will line up for the Grand Départ in decidedly better shape than the last two years. It remains to be seen if that will suffice to challenge or beat Pogačar, but Vingegaard has never finished lower than second at the Tour in five attempts, and that sequence looks likely to continue.

It would be tempting to couch Tour debutant Isaac del Toro as the LeMond to Pogačar’s Hinault, but there will be no internal challenge to the hierarchy at UAE Team Emirates-XRG. Although Del Toro has been one of the season’s outstanding performers, winning the UAE Tour, Tirreno-Adriatico and the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, his role as Pogačar’s key domestique is very clear. 

In ordinary circumstances, that would limit Del Toro’s ambitions at the Tour, but his leader is the most extraordinary rider in cycling and that opens possibilities for the Mexican. 

As João Almeida discovered two years ago, Pogačar doesn’t always need to lean too heavily on his last man in the mountains. Almeida helped himself to fourth place in 2024, and there’s no reason why Del Toro can’t do the same – or perhaps better. Adam Yates, after all, stood on the podium beside Pogačar back in 2023.

Much will depend on how the race unfolds. If Pogačar shows himself to be as far clear of the rest as he was for the past two Julys, then Del Toro’s podium chances increase massively. If Pogačar finds himself in a slugging match with Vingegaard – or others – then Del Toro might be forced to sacrifice his own GC ambitions for the greater good.

The inexorable rise of Paul Seixas was tempered slightly by his crash on the final weekend of the Dauphiné, though his defiant effort on the Grand Colombier did nothing to diminish his reputation. The Dauphiné experience, which culminated with an abandon on the final day, was a useful reminder that things don’t always run so smoothly in this game.

It won’t do much to dampen the expectation in France ahead of Seixas’ Tour debut, of course, but despite his dazzling performances so far this season, there are obvious question marks ahead of the main event. At 19, Seixas is the youngest Tour rider since the 1930s, and it’s not entirely clear if the podium – or better – is a realistic aspiration for a rider of such tender years.

Seixas’ dominance at Itzulia Basque Country and Flèche Wallonne and his courage at Liège-Bastogne-Liège suggested that anything is possible, of course, but it’s harder to draw firm conclusions from his interrupted Dauphiné.

Seixas looked very smooth indeed on the first mountain stage at Crest-Voland and he limited the damage well on the Grand Colombier after his crash. But observers like Marc Madiot have still wondered if Seixas is trying to do too much too soon. 

In truth, nobody, least of all Seixas himself, really knows what his ceiling is over three weeks. That makes him the most compelling story of this Tour.

Although Remco Evenepoel has won seven races this season and finished on the podium of his debut Tour of Flanders, he occupies this position in our ranking on past pedigree rather than on recent performance. 

It’s been a mixed start to life at Red Bull for Evenepoel, who began in sparkling form in Mallorca and Valencia before showing surprising limitations when the road climbed at the UAE Tour and the Volta a Catalunya.

Preparations for Evenepoel’s (not entirely) secret Ronde debut might have been a factor in those subdued climbing displays and the Belgian proceeded to win Amstel Gold Race in emphatic fashion. But he was a long way off Pogačar and Seixas at Liège-Bastogne-Liège, a performance that prompted a radical rethink of his Tour build-up.

A planned ride at the Dauphiné was scrapped in favour of a two-month block of training. Red Bull’s logic is that a similar approach served Evenepoel well when he won the 2022 Vuelta a España, but the opposition – and the stakes – are much higher here.

Still, it would be foolish to write off Evenepoel, who is never more dangerous than when he feels he has a point to prove. If he hits his stage racing weight at the right time like he did in 2024, then he can certainly make the podium on this Tour route, despite the depth of competition. And for all his travails in 2025, Evenepoel was still lying third overall when he abandoned on the Tourmalet.

There’s a strong case for putting Florian Lipowitz higher on this list, and he might well prove to be a more reliable option for Red Bull in July than Evenepoel. He has certainly been less spectacular but more consistent than his stablemate in stage races so far in 2026.

A long lay-off at the end of last year probably contributed to Lipowitz’s slow start in the Algarve (eighth), but he has since quietly placed third at the Volta a Catalunya and second at both Itzulia Basque Country and the Tour de Romandie. As in 2025, his consistency has been his calling card.

Lipowitz was originally scheduled to race the Dauphiné in June, as he did last year, but it was later decided to send him to the Tour of Slovenia. After all those placings, perhaps felt Red Bull Lipowitz needed a win to boost his confidence. And he delivered, winning the final two stages and the overall to secure his first victory since the Sibiu Tour in 2024. 

It will be intriguing to see how Lipowitz dovetails his efforts with Evenepoel in July, starting with the team time trial in Barcelona on the opening day. But regardless of the opposition, his Slovenia opposition showed that he is ready.

His old teammate Isaac del Toro eclipsed him quite comfortably at the Dauphiné, but Juan Ayuso still had plenty of positives to draw from his second place, and he will feel he still has some margin to improve ahead of the Tour.

Ayuso had started his tenure at Lidl-Trek on a fine note with victory at the Volta ao Algarve, and he looked prime for duel with Vingegaard at Paris-Nice only to crash out while wearing the yellow jersey. That incident essentially ruined his spring. Although Ayuso returned at Itzulia Basque Country, he was forced out by illness and compelled to miss the Ardennes Classics. 

A stint of altitude training at Sierra Nevada in May steadied the ship, however, and Ayuso was solid at the Dauphiné. He was ambitious – overly so – with his attack on the Grand Colombier, but while he was full of self-reproach after being caught and passed by Del Toro, he was still comfortably the best of the rest behind the Mexican.

Ayuso also dovetailed well with Mathias Skjelmose. The Dane’s public comments had previously done so much to create the impression that Lidl-Trek’s best climbers might not enjoy a happy cohabitation, but the Dauphiné gave lie to that notion. 

Afterwards, Ayuso summed up his race with a gnomic social media post: “Where there is light, there is also shadow. Will I stop loving the light just because it casts a shadow?” His Grand Tour career has known more shadows than light in recent years, but there’s no reason why Ayuso won’t shine in July.

There are few more reliable climbers in the peloton that Tobias Halland Johannessen, and the Norwegian has been a model of consistency again in 2026. He was up there on the two summit finishes at the UAE Tour, he was fourth overall at Tirreno-Adriatico and third at Itzulia Basque Country.

Johannessen was just as solid at the Dauphiné, and his fifth place on GC didn’t quite reflect his quality on the summit finishes. He was second from the break at Crest-Voland, his frustration evident at losing out to Maxim Van Gils. Perhaps more impressively, he was third behind Del Toro and Ayuso at the Grand Colombier and Plateau de Solaison on the following two days.

There are riders on this list with higher ambitions and higher ceilings than Johannessen, but few understand their abilities and their limitations quite as well as he does. That canniness served Johannessen well en route to sixth place overall in Paris a year ago, and a similar result is clearly within his reach again here.

It’s been hard to get a read on Tom Pidcock’s GC aspirations given the stop-start nature of his season and his own insistence that he won’t ride the Tour with a specific goal in mind, but his victory at the Andorra MoraBanc Clàssica offered a firm indication of his current form.

There were concerns when Pidcock withdrew from the Tour de Suisse citing a recent viral infection, but he allayed some of those doubts with his assured victory in Andorra. It remains to be seen if that condition will translate to a high overall finish or simply to three weeks of aggression in July, but Pidcock looks primed to make an impression.

Pidcock underscored his GC potential with third overall at last year’s Vuelta after racing with his typical fearlessness on the punchy stages and climbing strongly in the high mountains. His crash at the Volta a Catalunya meant that he hasn’t really tested himself in elite stage racing company yet this season, but he won’t be lacking in belief when he sets out from Barcelona on July 4.

Oscar Onley’s heavy crash at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes has ruled him out of the Tour de France and opened up a place in our list of favourites. We have gone for Cian Uijtdebroeks, who has quietly built momentum after a disrupted start to his first season with Movistar.

Uijtdebroeks fractured his elbow during his debut race for the Spanish team, but has been impressively consistent since returning. The Belgian finished fifth at Milano Torino, eighth at the Volta a Catalunya and twelfth at Itzulia Basque Country before taking seventh overall at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. 

He also finished fifth on the Grand Colombier and ninth on the final mountain stage, suggesting his climbing form is moving in the right direction at exactly the right time.

The 23-year-old has already demonstrated his Grand Tour potential, having finished eighth at the 2023 Vuelta a España. This will be his Tour de France debut and his first opportunity to lead a team at the race, with Movistar openly targeting a place in the top ten. His ability to maintain a high tempo on long climbs should suit the route, although he will need to respond to the more explosive accelerations of the leading contenders. 

With much of the Belgian attention likely to focus on Remco Evenepoel, Uijtdebroeks may also benefit from being able to approach his debut with relatively little pressure.