Pogacar expects Seixas to ride 2026 Tour de France: 'He is such a big talent'

Tadej Pogačar eventually saw off Paul Seixas on the Côte de la Roche-aux-Fauçons to win Liège-Bastogne-Liège, but he knows he hasn’t seen the last of the 19-year-old this season. 

After bringing the curtain down on his all-action Spring campaign, Seixas and his Decathlon CMA CGM team must now decide whether he will make his Tour de France debut this year. Tour director Christian Prudhomme is among those pushing for Seixas to ride, and the defending champion Pogačar told reporters in Liège that he expects to see the Frenchman in July.

“Yeah, I think we will see him on the Tour because he is such a big talent,” Pogačar said in the mixed zone after his win. “I think France can be happy with how he rides, but you guys need to take care of him.”

Pogačar was himself a precocious talent, and he was still shy of his 22nd birthday when he won the Tour on the first attempt in 2020. Seixas, who turned professional directly from the junior ranks in 2025, has produced a series of extraordinary performances in his sophomore season.

Seixas already impressed by placing second behind Pogačar at Strade Bianche in March, and his development has continued apace ever since. An all-action week at Itzulia Basque Country yielded three stage wins and the overall title, and Seixas went on to become the youngest ever winner of Flèche Wallonne with a fearless display on the Mur de Huy.

On Sunday, Seixas was the only rider to follow Pogačar’s attack on the Côte de la Redoute with 35km to go, and he combined smoothly with the world champion over the other side. He was only distanced with 500m of the day’s last climb remaining, and Pogačar confessed that he had been braced for a two-up sprint in Liège.

“It was tough to crack Paul in the end, but I’m happy to win,” said Pogačar, who had lost Paris-Roubaix in a sprint to Wout van Aert. 

“Between La Redoute and Roche-aux-Fauçons, I was already thinking about how I should approach a duo sprint. It wasn’t a big gap like with Wout in Roubaix where he would humiliate me in a sprint, so I had this in mind already, but I still wanted to try on the last climb and I succeeded.”

Seixas would finish the day in second place, 45 seconds behind Pogačar, and he struck a positive note about his performance. 

“It feels good to know I can compete with the best. We’ll take that into account for the rest of the season,” Seixas said, according to RMC, though he was careful not to commit to riding the Tour just yet.

“First the holidays, then we’ll look at the calendar. We’ll see how we’re going to plan things; we’ll see next week. I’d be happy to see Pogačar again [this season]. I told him he’d made my legs hurt, and he said his had been hurting too.”