Everything you need to know about the Tour de Romandie 2026

It was only on Sunday that Tadej Pogacar put the finishing touches to a spectacular classics season with another impressive solo victory at Liège-Bastogne-Liège. From now on, the world champion of the last two years will focus on stage races - with the big goal of winning the Tour de France for the fifth time in July.

He is choosing his races carefully this year: he has only raced five days, crossing the finish line as the winner four times. This makes it all the more remarkable that the Slovenian is making two stops in Switzerland in preparation for this summer's season highlight.

The dominator of recent years is not only using the Tour de Romandie as a stage this week, but also the Tour de Suisse in mid-June. This will be the first time he has ridden on Swiss roads since winning his first world championship title in Zurich in the fall of 2024. And Tadej Pogacar wants to win - after all, these two World Tour races are still missing from his impressive palmarès.

Red Bull one-two and Swiss quintet

This inevitably raises the question: who will steal the show from the leader of Team UAE Emirates on his debut in Romandie?

Red Bull is sending two strong challengers into the race with Primoz Roglic, the winner of 2018 and 2019, and Florian Lipowitz, third overall in last year's Tour de France. Britain's Oscar Onley (Ineos-Grenadiers) and France's Lenny Martinez (Bahrain-Victorious) are also expected to be strong contenders for overall victory.

However, Pogacar's team-mate João Almeida, who won last year, is missing from the start list. The same applies to French prodigy Paul Seixas. His team Decathlon is one of the four teams that have made use of a special arrangement: In order to equalize the busy racing calendar between the Ardennes Classics and the Giro start in Hungary, the team is foregoing its World Tour starting place.

From a local perspective, hopes are pinned above all on Mauro Schmid. The Swiss champion wants to use his momentum from the week in the Ardennes to ideally take a stage win. The Swiss team Tudor is also relying on a concentrated local presence and is sending a Swiss quartet into the race with Yannis Voisard, Joel Suter, Roland Thalmann and Robin Donzé.

A 6-day race of progression

The 79th edition of the Tour de Romandie is traditionally launched with a prologue, which this year leads over 3.2 km through the Fribourg municipality of Villars-sur-Glâne. It is a special anniversary for race director Richard Chassot: in his 20th edition at the helm of the tour, the race begins in his birthplace.

After that, the tour resembles an uphill race in which the level of difficulty increases from day to day. The prologue on Wednesday is followed by a rather flat stage with start and finish in Martigny. The profile on the third day between Rue and Vucherens is already more hilly, before second and third category mountains await on a circuit around Orbe. The battle for overall victory is likely to really heat up on the queen stage on Saturday at the latest, with a three-time crossing of the Jaun Pass, before the grand finale follows on Sunday with the mountain arrival in Leysin.