Paul Seixas explains 2026 race calendar and Tour de France dilemma

The 2025 season, his first in the professional peloton, ended exactly two months ago at Il Lombardia, and Seixas knew he needed a reset before thinking about what comes next. 

“I already had a good holiday, four weeks that really did me a lot of good,” he said to L’Équipe. “Those holidays allowed me to reset completely. I got back on the bike a month ago and I am starting to feel good sensations again.”

He wanted to be involved in the planning from the start. “It was not difficult at all,” he said of choosing his early race schedule. 

“I asked the team to come up with several versions, with certain key points that I absolutely wanted to include. I asked them for stage races. My programme combines one-day races and stage races, that is what I wanted, that is what I felt like doing. I liked what they proposed straight away.”

He will prepare at altitude in the weeks before the Volta ao Algarve. “I will mainly be coming straight down from an altitude camp just before the Algarve. It worked out well; it was coherent. I need that for my build-up,” he explained.

“We looked at races that had a time trial and it will be the same thing at the Tour of the Basque Country. That is important for me, because I am meant to go for the general classification. A time trial is a situation I need.”

Instead of Paris-Nice or Tirreno Adriatico, he has chosen to discover Strade Bianche. “You might think it is a dangerous race but there is nothing that is not dangerous in cycling,” he said with a laugh. 

“There are crashes, yes, but like in every race. I really like Strade, I do not forget that I came through cyclocross, the technical aspect appeals to me. I rode Strade Bianche as a junior. I loved it so much. It is a race that could suit me well.”

He also requested to add Liège Bastogne Liège after his seventh place at Il Lombardia. “I asked for it,” he said. “It will be my second Monument. It could also suit me very well. This race made me dream, it mattered to me.”

For now, the official schedule stops at the end of April and that is very much by design. The second part of the year is deliberately left open. “With the team, we have simply not yet decided what I will do afterwards,” Seixas said. “It leaves me with several options. That is what is good and what I liked. It will allow us to see how my form evolves, what I can really do, how to adapt.”

That open window is useful because one question dominates most conversations around him. Will 2026 already be the year he rides the Tour de France? Seixas says the noise does not irritate him. “No, because I do not really pay that much attention to it to be honest,” he said, still smiling. “Of course, people would like me to ride the Tour, and I understand that, because I am French. But I focus more on what I want to do, on what is best for my development above all.”