The biggest race of the season is upon us as the women’s peloton heads to Switzerland for the Tour de France Femmes, running August 1-9.

The Women’s WorldTour has already visited La Vuelta Femenina and the Giro d’Italia Women, with the Alto de l’Angliru and the Colle delle Finestre both playing a starring role on the routes of the season’s first two Grand Tours.

Next week, another of cycling’s most fabled and challenging climbs is on the menu of the Tour de France Femmes route, with Mont Ventoux playing host to the final of stage 7.

Along with the 15.7km monster, there are plenty more challenges along the way from Lausanne to Nice, with a record 18,795 metres of elevation spread across the 1,175km of the race’s nine stages.

As part of our countdown to the Grand Départ, let’s take a look at four key stages which should decide the destination of the maillot jaune this August.

Stage 4: Gevrey-Chambertin – Dijon TT (21km)

After the Swiss hilltop finish on the opening day, the race will head for a pair of sprinter-friendly stages on stages 2 and 3, with the latter bringing the race into France, even if the pair are challenging with a combined 4,300 metres of climbing.

The next big test comes on stage 4 with the first significant individual time trial in the Tour de France Femmes since the 22.6km closer in Pau three years ago – there was an ITT in the 2024 edition, as part of the double stage second day in Rotterdam, but it was only 6.3km.

This time around, the time trial comes earlier in the race to prevent the spectre of the race for yellow being a foregone conclusion as it was when Demi Vollering held on to win the GC by three minutes in 2023.

At 21km, this time trial is a similar length and features a similar climb in the middle. The 1.8km, 6.9% climb of the Lacets de Marsannay (three hairpins in the Marsannay rosé wine-producing area of Burgundy) should provoke some major differences ahead of a 6km descent into Dijon, home of the famous mustard.

It’s Dijon’s first time hosting a stage of the Tour de France Femmes, though the city did welcome a sprint finish of the men’s race in 2024, where Dylan Groenewegen triumphed. The next day was a time trial with several similarities to this stage, at 25km in length, with a hill in the middle, and concluding in Gevrey-Chambertin, which hosts the start of this stage.

This stage will give the top women’s racers a rare chance to take on a time trial, with the Giro and Tour de Suisse being the only Women’s WorldTour races to feature one so far in 2026.

Time trial world champion Marlen Reusser (Movistar) and under-23 world champion Zoe Bäckstedt (Canyon-SRAM) finished one-two, almost a minute clear of the rest, in Switzerland, and will be among the favourites once again. Meanwhile, Demi Vollering (FDJ United-SUEZ) and Anna van der Breggen (SD Worx-Protime) will also be among the ones to watch.

Stage 5: Mâcon – Belleville-en-Beaujolais (140km)

There’s no let-up after the Tour’s test against the clock as the race heads south through the Beaujolais wine region and the hills of the Ardèche. Stage 5 (and 6, for that matter) is unlikely to decide the fate of the yellow jersey, but there’s certainly time to be won and lost here, and the GC favourites will have to stay alert against attacks.

On paper, stage 5 is the second-toughest day of the race, with 2,900 metres and eight classified climbs filling its 140km route. The stage, then, is comparable to Liège-Bastogne-Liège, which this year featured 10 climbs and 2,600 metres of elevation across 156km.

Expect plenty of attacking racing then, especially on the two later climbs of the Col de Durbize (3.6km at 5.8%) and Mont Brouilly (3km at 7.7%).

Both featured in a 2024 stage of the men’s Paris-Nice, though that day finished atop Mont Brouilly as Santiago Buitrago soloed to victory. A year earlier, the men’s Tour visited Belleville-en-Beaujolais for another hilly day out where Ion Izagirre converted a 30km solo into a win from the breakaway.

Here, there will be challenges from the start in Mâcon. The first of three second-category ascents comes from the off with the 9.6km, 4.4% ascent of the Côte de Cenves. Five more climbs are packed into the first half of the stage, including another second-category hill, the Col de Gerbet (4.6km at 6.5%).

It’s unlikely that the winning move of the day will be made that early, given the climb sits 71.3km from the finish line. Between the hilly start and the previous day’s TT, though, there will be some sore legs heading into the finale.

A mostly downhill 10.6km run lies between that last climb at Mont Brouilly and the line. It looks like Tour organisers have cooked up an exciting stage here, with great potential for a battle between any late attackers and those chasing behind, with a GC battle surely on the cards.

Stage 7: La Voulte-sur-Rhône – Mont Ventoux (146.8km)

On stage 7, the Tour de France Femmes continues its traditions of challenging the women’s peloton with a new legendary climb every year. In the past three editions, the femmes have tackled the Col du Tourmalet, L’Alpe d’Huez, and the Col de la Madeleine. Now it’s time for the giant of Provence, Mont Ventoux.

The bald mountain barely needs an introduction, having featured in 18 editions of the men’s Tour de France. Recent editions have seen Wout van Aert triumph on the double Ventoux day in 2021, while Valentin Paret-Peintre won the most recent of Ventoux’s summit finishes last summer.

The women’s race will hit the climb for the first time this August, but the women’s peloton has tackled Ventoux before.

In 2016, former Olympic champion Anna Kiesenhofer soloed to victory by almost four minutes in the Tour Cycliste Féminin International de l’Ardèche, while the mountain also hosted the only edition of the women’s Mont Ventoux Dénivelé Challenge in 2022. On that day, the now-retired Marta Cavalli beat Clara Koppenburg to the top during her wonder year as Evita Muzic finished third.

Back in 2016, Kiesenhofer couldn’t convert her huge triumph into overall victory at the seven-stage 2.2-ranked race, and it remains to be seen if the Ventoux winner at this Tour will be able to do so. If the results of those ‘highlight mountains’ in recent Tours are anything to go by, however, the Ventoux winner should be the favourite to wear yellow in Nice.

Much of the day’s 3,500 metres of climbing comes with the final ascent, though there are challenges in the 127.6km before the road tilts up in Bédoin. The second-category climbs of the Col de la Grande Limite (6.6km at 5%) and the Col de Suzette (3.9km at 6.4%) will soften up the legs before the big one.

The official climb begins shortly after Bédoin at Saint-Estéve, and the numbers involved from that point onwards are pretty grim. For the 15.7km to the top, the average gradient is 8.8%, with the first 8km rarely lower than 9%.

At Chalet Reynard, 10km in, the nature of the climb changes as the riders head out of the forest and into the open moonscape for the final run to the communications tower at the summit. Here, the riders are exposed to the elements, namely the Mistral wind, which can make the challenge even tougher depending on its direction (often a cross/headwind).

The stage will host a GC spectacular, and possibly the decisive day of the Tour. Let’s hope that the winds up top aren’t so high as to cut the action short as they did in the men’s race a decade ago.

Stage 9: Nice – Nice (99.2km)

As the Tour de France Femmes heads to its conclusion on day nine, it’s the Mediterranean city of Nice which follows on from La Planche des Belles Filles, Pau, L’Alpe d’Huez, and Châtel to host the race’s grand finale.

Stage 9 is the shortest road stage of the race at 99.2km, and it’s hoped the day can mimic the often-explosive and dramatic finale of the men’s Paris-Nice.

The stage begins and ends in the city, with the famous coastal road, the Promenade des Anglais, hosting the finish. Standing between the riders and that finish line are 2,100 metres of climbing and four ascents of the Col d’Eze, the hill overlooking the city, which is the trademark of the Paris-Nice closer.

The hill has often hosted a time trial in Paris-Nice over the years, with Sean Kelly winning there five times, as well as a famous final day TT turnaround in 2015 for Richie Porte. Tour organisers will be hoping for small GC time gaps heading into the stage so the high drama of the March race can carry over to stage 9 this August.

The climbing comes from the very start here, so expect the cream to rise to the top early on and GC movement to get underway before the final climb. It’s up and down all day, with three ascents of the 7.7km, 5.9% climb packed into the opening 60km and only a couple of flat kilometres as they head back down into Nice after each descent.

The toughest challenge is saved for last as the riders head to the summit via a different road – the Chemin du Vinaigrier rather than the road past the Côte d’Azur Observatory. That final ascent is shorter but steeper, measuring 6km and an average of 7.6%. One of the early kilometres of that final climb measures in above a leg-breaking 12%, too.

As such, expect the best climbers and GC riders of the Tour to contend for victory here; think Vollering, Reusser, Niewiadoma-Phinney, Ferrand-Prévot, Van der Breggen, Blasi, and more. Hopefully the race for yellow is one of seconds rather than minutes at this point.

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