Remco Evenepoel sets 2026 Tour target: 'Yes, I can win it'

He has just moved from Soudal-Quick Step to Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe, and he frames the transfer as a choice made for one reason: to take the final steps toward winning in Paris.

The question that has followed him for years arrives again, and his first answer lands quieter than the rest. But it still lands. Asked by Sporza's Karl Vannieuwkerke if he can win the Tour de France in 2026, Evenepoel replies: “Yes.” He immediately adds the conditions that matter to him, and they are not excuses but checkpoints. 

“If everything keeps going well and if I can have a really good winter, good training camps and the points I’m looking for in the races in spring.” He wants early proof too, the kind that changes belief into certainty. “If I can show in Catalunya that I’m there to win, like I was in 2023 on the way to the Giro, then I definitely think I can reach that level.”

Evenepoel’s 2025 began in survival mode as he worked his way back from injury. The flash of class was immediate in the Brabantse Pijl and Amstel Gold Race, yet the bigger targets refused to click: Liège–Bastogne–Liège was a struggle, and his Tour de France ended early when illness forced him out mid-race. 

What followed rewrote the year. He returned with force at the World Championships, taking the time trial title and finishing second in the road race, then carried that level into autumn with second places at Il Lombardia and the European Championchips behind Tadej Pogačar.

At Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe, leadership is presented as shared on paper with Florian Lipowitz, but Evenepoel does not sell it as a political problem. He talks about contrast, not conflict. “Florian and I are both very ambitious, but we are two different riders.” 

Then he sketches the difference in simple terms: “I’m more explosive, Florian needs to warm up like a diesel. We are opposites and together that can only work out well.” The goal, he says, should be singular. “We need to complement each other and not work against each other for the objective of this team: to win the Tour one day.”

The shadow over any Tour dream is, of course, Tadej Pogačar. Evenepoel has heard the Slovenian’s comment that the move could make him even stronger, and he laughs at the mind games. “I picked up on it, yes. But is he serious? He might also be saying it to mess with me.” 

Then the tone hardens into something sharper, almost bright. “I want to be better than him.” He does not pretend that is easy. “That’s very difficult, we all know that. But that’s the reason I came here [Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe]. To take those steps. To go over it, on it and over it.” 

And he accepts the cost. “That will take a lot of strength, but I’m very motivated and I really needed this new step to open up a kind of ceiling. I hope I can really break through this year.”

He is also specific about where the gap lives. The recent years of setbacks, injuries, and interruptions, he says, forced him to keep rebuilding the base, leaving too little time for the extra layer on top: high intensity. 

“Your base has to be there before you can work on that high intensity, the real VO2 max sessions. That’s the point where I can improve the most.” He makes the Pogačar problem technical, almost clinical. “It’s logical: when Tadej attacks, I can follow for a moment, but not for long. That’s what I have to work on.”

The past still stings, especially the Giro d’Italia in 2023, when he abandoned in pink after Covid. “The biggest ‘what if’ is that withdrawal from the Giro. I had a big lead and our plan had been perfect up to then.” He believes he would have won it. 

And when the conversation turns to Belgium’s Tour history, he does the maths out loud. “The last Belgian to win the Tour? Lucien Van Impe, right? In? 1976. So next year? Ah yes, then it’s 50 years. Wow.” 

Then, smiling: “Thanks for the pressure.”