The Tour de France 2026 ends in Paris today with Pogacar in yellow and no João Almeida
The Tour de France 2026 finishes in Paris on Sunday, with Tadej Pogacar starting the final day more than seven minutes clear. João Almeida missed the race after a virus wrecked his spring.
The Tour de France 2026 settles up in Paris on Sunday, and Slovenia’s Tadej Pogacar starts the final day in the yellow jersey with a lead nobody is taking off him. It began on 4 July in Barcelona, one of the rare occasions the Grand Depart landed on Iberian soil, and ends 3,321 kilometres later on the Champs-Elysees.
When does the Tour de France 2026 finish?
Today, 26 July. The race ran from 4 to 26 July, starting in Barcelona and finishing in Paris. The closing stage is traditionally more ceremony than contest: the general classification is already settled, the day usually ends in a bunch sprint, and the leaders ride into the French capital with a glass of champagne in hand.
How does the general classification look going into Paris?
Effectively sealed. Pogacar reached the final weekend more than seven minutes clear, after a ride up Alpe d’Huez that went straight into the record books — he climbed cycling’s most famous mountain in 35 minutes and 27 seconds, beating by more than two minutes the mark Marco Pantani set back in 1995. It was his first stage win on that climb.
Oddly enough, he was not the man who opened the race in yellow. On the first stage, a 19.6-kilometre team time trial around Barcelona, Visma edged INEOS by a little over seven seconds and it was Jonas Vingegaard who pulled on the first yellow jersey of the edition. Pogacar’s UAE came third, eleven seconds down. What looked like the prologue to another three-week duel came apart in the mountains.
Why did João Almeida miss the Tour de France?
Because he was in no shape for it, and his team chose not to gamble. The best Portuguese rider in the peloton had his spring wrecked by a viral infection that for weeks left him unable to train or recover properly, and he ended up missing the Giro d’Italia too. He said publicly that he did not feel ready for three weeks in July.
UAE Team Emirates confirmed an eight-man Tour squad without him: alongside Pogacar rode Isaac del Toro, Brandon McNulty, Adam Yates, Tim Wellens, Pavel Sivakov, Nils Politt and Florian Vermeersch. Almeida’s target for the season became the Vuelta a España, where the plan is to rebuild towards the top-level climbing form he has shown in grand tours before.
If you follow the sport in Portuguese there is still plenty ahead: the Volta a Portugal starts in Lisbon on 5 August and finishes in Porto, and that is where much of the national peloton races at home. Full Tour stages and standings are on the official race site.
By Vasco Almada
Image: Skyebble / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)
