Pogacar, van der Poel and 'future-proof' racing - The storylines to follow at the Tour de Suisse

Wout van Aert’s resilience and finishing speed in Roubaix means that this won’t be quite a perfect season for Tadej Pogačar, but the world champion is still the clear favourite for every race on his calendar, and anything other than overall victory at the Tour de Suisse would constitute a major shock.

Pogačar has been unimpeachable so far in 2026, winning Strade Bianche, Milan-Sanremo, the Tour of Flanders and Liège-Bastogne-Liège when he focused on one-day races at the start of the year, and then rattling off four stage wins and overall victory at the Tour de Romandie when he belatedly toggled over to stage racing.

By his own admission, Pogačar was a few kilos off his usual stage racing weight for that event, yet his dominance was never remotely challenged. Pogačar now returns to Switzerland after a long training camp at Sierra Nevada, his first stint at altitude this season. Anecdotal evidence from Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe riders who witnessed him in action there suggests that Pogačar is in pretty decent nick. A sobering thought. 

Twelve months ago, Pogačar divested the Tour de France of much of its suspense by crushing the field at the Critérium du Dauphiné. He won’t face direct rivals like Jonas Vingegaard, Paul Seixas and Remco Evenepoel here, but that’s hardly likely to stop him from looking to strike a psychological blow before July.

Primoz Roglič’s presence at Red Bull’s Sierra Nevada camp inevitably led to speculation that he might be parachuted into their Tour de France team in support of Remco Evenepoel and Florian Lipowitz, though management has insisted all year that the Vuelta a España will be the only Grand Tour on his programme.

It remains to be seen if Roglič will be the sole leader at the Vuelta, of course, given how he has found space hard to come by this year. He placed fifth at Tirreno-Adriatico, where he raced alongside Giulio Pellizzari, and then he was essentially put in the service of Lipowitz at Itzulia Basque Country and the Tour de Romandie.

At the Tour de Suisse, by contrast, Roglič has the clear opportunity to race for his own result and chase victory in one of the few big week-long stage races that doesn’t feature on his palmarès. And with good reason – as with Pogačar, this will be Roglič’s debut at the Tour de Suisse.

In his imperial phase from 2018 to 2023, Roglič went 13 for 16 in non-Grand Tour stage races, (a figure that might have been higher for a pair of costly crashes along the way), but the Tour de Suisse was never on his programme. 

In that era, Roglič would have been an obvious favourite, but at 36 and against this all-conquering iteration of Pogačar, he lines up as an outsider. Even so, he will be one of the week’s most compelling stories.

Mathieu van der Poel likes a bit of variety in his build-up to the Tour de France, but after running through most of the other May and June options in recent years – the Giro, the Dauphiné, the Tour of Belgium, mountain biking – he has decided to return to the Tour de Suisse for the first time since 2021.

On that occasion, Van der Poel warmed up for his Tour debut with a brace of stage wins on Swiss roads, and it will be a surprise if he doesn’t make an impact here. At the Dauphiné twelve months ago, Van der Poel couldn’t quite grab the stage win his efforts probably deserved, but he placed in the top 10 on the first five stages and he used a punishing spell in the break on the road to Charantonnay as part of his attempt to trash himself into shape for July.

Although there’s only one full-blown mountain stage on this year’s Tour de Suisse, Van der Poel knows he will face a battle to live with Pogačar and Tom Pidcock on the punchy terrain in the finales of the first two stages. His best shot might come in Bad Ragaz on stage 3, where the few fast finishers might already be burned off before the flat run-in. 

No matter, Van der Poel has a habit of using his June racing as a very public training camp. Regardless of the results, expect a show. 

In the 1970s and 1980s, the Tour de Suisse routinely took place over ten or even eleven stages, making it something of a miniature Grand Tour, but the race was aligned more closely with other weeklong events by the birth of the WorldTour in the 21st century, when it settled on an eight-stage format like Paris-Nice and the Critérium du Dauphiné.

2026 marks a new departure for the men’s race, which has been scaled back to five stages in a move that the organisation described as “necessary to ensure the Tour de Suisse is financially sustainable and future-proof.”

At first glance, the temptation is to view a reduction in race days as an ominous portent for a venerable race, but the new format has some potential upsides. Most notably, the women’s race has been extended from four days to five and it now overlaps completely with the men’s race in the manner of a tennis Grand Slam tournament. Each stage of the men’s and women’s races also start and finish in the same place, which should theoretically increase crowds and local interest.

There have been plenty of attempts in cycling at presenting new formats that nobody really asked for – Hammer Series, anyone? – but this rebooted Tour de Suisse feels rather different, not least because Oliver Senn and his team won’t have taken the decision lightly. 

An abridged edition of the race can certainly pack in just as much entertainment, as the explosive five-day Dauphiné in 2020 proved. And in a calendar that demands so much of its riders, maybe it’s no harm to start wondering if less can be more.

The full verdict won’t come until later, of course. But if Pogačar, Pidcock et al shine in July, the scaled-back Tour de Suisse might even usurp the rebadged Dauphiné as the Tour de France warm-up race of choice.