It’s official, the Tour de France Women will arrive in Nice for the first time. The announcement was made by the event’s director Marion Rousse during the presentation of the route.
After the men in 2024 and an unprecedented finish of the Grand Tour on the Promenade des Anglais, it’s the women’s turn to stop in Nice. The Côte d’Azur capital will host the final of the 2026 event for a last stage that could shake up the general classification in the final kilometres.
Before that, Nice will also be the finish line of the 8th and penultimate stage starting from Sisteron. This stage will be the longest of this 5th edition with no fewer than 175 km and 1,420 m of elevation gain and will take the famous Napoleon Route.
The riders will therefore spend two days on the Côte d’Azur to close out this Tour de France Women. The final day will see the riders competing for the general classification face off on a 99 km circuit starting from Place Masséna with a highlight of a quadruple ascent of the Col d’Eze before finishing on the Promenade des Anglais. The first three laps of the circuit will be identical until the last loop which will pass through the Vinaigrier path (with slopes of 16%) recently added to the Paris-Nice program. In total, cyclists will have to tackle no fewer than 2,175 m of elevation gain as a finale! Nothing less.
“Nice is so prestigious that it’s a guarantee that the event will be successful, because it has everything”, explained Marion Rousse, director of the Tour de France Women. “I’m fortunate to be able to come there every year thanks to Paris-Nice, and I can tell you that we’re always happy to come here. It’s synonymous with beauty, with spectacle in terms of sport, things often come down to seconds, so it’s a guarantee that the event will be spectacular right to the end. Truly, this final stage will be decisive.”
This is not the first time the women’s race will arrive in the Alpes-Maritimes since in 2020, the Course by Le Tour which prefigured the Tour de France Women saw competitors face off for several days in the region.
As with every edition, the public should be present in large numbers to support the defending champion Pauline Ferrand-Prévot who will defend her yellow jersey.
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