The makeshift podium from August's Vuelta a Espana has barely been taken down, Tadej Pogacar has only just crossed the line to take his fifth Il Lombardia title, but professional cycling marches ever forward.
Their sport's seasons inevitably revolve around the Tour de France, and that event's much-anticipated 2026 route was announced at Paris' Palais des Congres on Thursday morning.
After a Grand Depart in the Spanish province of Catalonia, the 3,333km (2,071-mile) men's route will feature trips to each of France's five major mountain ranges before an Alpine denouement capped by two successive summit finishes on Alpe d'Huez, being visited for the first time since Tom Pidcock won there in 2022.
In the Tour de France Femmes, beginning next year in Switzerland, the headline of the nine-stage parcours is the women's peloton's first ascent of the legendary Mont Ventoux.
This, then, is what we can look forward to next summer.
The Tour de France Femmes has been gradually increasing in size and scope -- expanding to nine stages for the first time in 2025. Having seen its first home winner in Pauline Ferrand-Prevot this year, interest in the race is at an all-time high -- but there have been questions about its ideal development pathway.
"I really think the sport has grown, but we need to give it time to become bigger," Ferrand-Prevot told The Athletic last month. "It needs time. It's already growing so much and so far that I'm a bit scared that we want too much. I think for now, we just have to settle down, and though there is talk of having a longer Tour de France at the moment, I don't think the peloton is ready for that."
For 2026, organisers appear to have aimed for a middle ground -- increasing the total distance and total ascent but sticking with nine stages. The route will be 1,175km (730 miles) with 18,795m of climbing -- 1,500m more than this year.
The TdFF will start outside France for just the second time, beginning on August 1 with a hilly stage in Lausanne, before a sprinters' stage in Geneva the following day. Stage four is a 21km individual time trial, before the mountains gradually increase en route to stage seven -- an ascent of the mythical Mont Ventoux.
Arguably France's most famous climb (more on the other contender for that title later), the high winds of the summit mean it is only usually tackled every five years or more. Its sparing use adds to its reputation as the 'Beast of Provence' -- its TdFF debut will be a hugely significant moment for women's cycling.
The race will then conclude in Nice -- "the capital city of cycling for us in France", according to the organisers -- with a hilly four-lap loop liable to create more time gaps between the contenders.
After last year's home Grand Depart in Lille, the men's Tour is heading back abroad for its 2026 start -- across the Pyrenees to Catalonia.
A team presentation outside Barcelona's iconic Sagrada Familia cathedral? The organisers' graphics certainly appeared to imply it.
Stage one on July 4 will be a team time-trial -- once these were a staple of the Tour, but they are now vanishingly rare events. The interest in this TTT will surround its format. Due to be held under 'Paris-Nice rules', every rider in a team will record their own individual time, rather than the first four registering their official finish -- meaning teams will need to decide if they wish to lead out their GC contenders at the expense of other top colleagues.
Route planner Thierry Gouvenou has described wanting to have a challenging day in each Grand Depart -- and that comes on stage two, with the route from Tarragona taking the peloton on multiple loops past Barcelona's Olympic Stadium on the slopes of Montjuic. Expect early GC action.
Finally, stage three may finish in France, but is a cross-border test featuring 4,000m of climbing, with the breakaway likely to win in Les Angles.
Compared to 2025, which gave us almost a perfect wheel right around France, next year's route omits large chunks of the country -- including virtually the whole of the north. This quirk has led to a slightly backloaded, Giro d'Italia-esque route -- with almost the entire final week of the race spent climbing in the Jura, Vosges and Alps.
One exception comes on stage six -- the only true stage in the high Pyrenees -- where an ascent of the Tourmalet, followed by a summit finish at Gavarnie-Gedre, will split the GC contenders. In a worst-case scenario, for excitement at least, this could be where Pogacar takes a decisive lead.
The sprinters will receive six opportunities, one more than they got this summer, but this is another Tour for the breakaway specialists, such as EF-Education's Ben Healy, with the first two weeks typically passing through rolling terrain. The likes of famed scientist Louis Pasteur and current France rugby-union captain Antoine Dupont have been honoured with starts in their hometowns, while stage 12 begins at the Magny-Cours racetrack, the historic home of Formula One's French Grand Prix.
World time-trial champion Remco Evenepoel will be disappointed, however, with just one 26km individual time trial following the opening TTT, in a major blow to his yellow jersey hopes with new team Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe.
With 54,000m of climbing scheduled across five summit finishes, 2,500m more than this year, the 2026 Tour's organisers have been imaginative. Several significant climbs will either make their debut or be revisited for the first time in decades.
Les Angles, the ski resort finish of stage three, is among the former, while the Pyrenees' famous Tourmalet will be climbed via a new route three days later.
Entering the Jura in the race's final week, the brand-new Col du Haag will be decisive on stage 14 -- an irregular 11km climb featuring brutal sections of 15 per cent. A day later, the Col de la Croisette will appear for the first time since 1992, followed by a summit finish on the Plateau de Solaison -- also making its debut.
Then, in the final, decisive days of July, comes a classic -- Alpe d'Huez, where the 21 hairpin turns have made it the most iconic climb of the Alps, and arguably, given how regularly it appears on the route, the whole Tour.
It has never been this regular, however.
Because Stage 19 will be a short 128km summit finish on which Pogacar will have a real chance of breaking Marco Pantani's all-time climbing record -- 37 minutes and 35 seconds in 1997 -- before the race returns to that same peak the very next day.
Stage 20 is the undoubted queen stage of the 2026 Tour, and though Alpe d'Huez will be climbed from the back, meaning it is a short hop to the summit, the drama is what comes before -- with the Col de la Croix de Fer, Col du Telegraphe, Col du Galibier and Col de Sarenne, all submitted over a potentially race-defining 5,600m of climbing.
The redemptive sight of Wout van Aert speeding down the slick cobbles of Montmartre, having dropped Pogacar moments before, was one of the defining moments of the 2025 race. Despite the Parisian deluge that day, Sacre-Couer was packed with fervid support -- and having left a potential return open in July, it turns out the Tour's organisers could not resist coming back for more.
Once again, the Tour will still finish on the Champs Elysees -- but there will be one significant change. Though the final ascent of Montmartre took place with six kilometres remaining this year, the route for 2026 will see 15km between the summit and the finish line -- a move intended, according to race director Christian Prudhomme, to give sprinters a better chance while retaining the excitement of the basilica.
"We wanted to nail this down again and hope to make it a regular feature," Prudhomme said of a finish which already feels like a classic.