If the Amstel Gold Race is a chaotic, six-hour interval session through Dutch traffic furniture, La Flèche Wallonne is the exact opposite. It is roughly 200 kilometers of heavily controlled pacing, entirely designed to culminate in three minutes of pure, unadulterated anaerobic suffering.
Welcome to the middle child of Ardennes Week. Taking place this Wednesday, April 22, the 90th edition of Flèche Wallonne is a race that requires extreme patience, flawless positioning, and the willingness to completely empty your legs on a gradient so steep it actively defies the laws of physics.
With the men’s peloton still reeling from the injury apocalypse of last weekend, and the women’s peloton dealing with a completely upended hierarchy, here is everything you need to know before the peloton hits the Mur de Huy.
The Route: A Three-Minute Waiting Game
While this year’s men’s race departs from Herstal and covers nearly 200 kilometers through the rolling Walloon countryside, let’s be entirely honest: the first 160 kilometers are effectively a parade of attrition.
The entire race is defined by a punishing final circuit that features the Côte d’Ereffe, the Côte de Cherave, and the most feared finishing climb in professional cycling: The Mur de Huy (The Wall of Huy).
The men will tackle the Mur three times, but it is the final ascent to the finish line that matters. It is only 1.3 kilometers long, but it averages 9.6% and features a brutal, soul-crushing S-bend that pitches well over 20%.
The Mur de Huy strips away all team tactics. And if you launch your sprint 50 meters too early, you will detonate before the line and lose ten places in ten seconds. You can definitely get away with saying “he’s gone too early” on this race and looking like a tactical genius.
Ones to Watch: Who Will Win the 2026 Flèche Wallonne?
2026 Fleche Wallonne startlist. The defining story of this race is who isn’t here. Tadej Pogačar is resting his legs for Liège-Bastogne-Liège on Sunday. Remco Evenepoel, fresh off surviving the Amstel Gold chaos to take the win, has opted to skip Wednesday to recover. And with the medical ward still full of pre-race favorites like Tom Pidcock and Ben Healy, the door is wide open for the pure puncheurs.
Paul Seixas (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) The 19-year-old French phenom is the hottest commodity in the peloton right now. While making his debut in the Ardennes, he has the exact explosive profile required to set the Mur de Huy on fire. If he gets his timing right, the teenager could steal a WorldTour classic.
Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek) After finishing a frustrating second to Evenepoel at Amstel Gold, the Dane is probably the favorite. He was runner-up at Flèche in 2023, and his current form is terrifyingly sharp. He knows exactly how to pace the Mur.
Benoît Cosnefroy (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) With Pogačar absent, Cosnefroy gets the green light. He has built his entire career around short, explosive, uphill sprints. If he starts the final 300 meters in the top five, his kick is virtually unmatched.
Kévin Vauquelin (INEOS Grenadiers) He finished second here in 2024 and 2025. Despite a minor tumble at Amstel, he has the pedigree and the raw power to finally step onto the top tier of the podium if he can navigate the approach cleanly.
Cyclry Bonus Name: Julian Alaphilippe. We’d just enjoy it.
The Women’s Race Preview
2026 Fleche Wallonne Femmes startlist.
The women’s peloton hits the Mur de Huy reeling from the Amstel Gold Race.
Everybody expected a battle between Demi Vollering and Katarzyna Niewiadoma (who won Flèche Wallonne Femmes in 2024 with a brilliant attack). Instead, Paula Blasi stormed to a jaw-dropping solo victory.
For Flèche Wallonne, Vollering and Niewiadoma will be out for blood. The Mur perfectly suits Vollering’s seated, high-torque climbing style, and she will want to re-establish dominance before heading to Liège. However, you can never count out Lotte Kopecky, who has spent the spring proving that she can survive gradients that supposedly don’t suit her.
Nerd Corner: Flèche Trivia
- Watch for the Monument: The steepest part of the Mur de Huy features a monument dedicated to Claude Criquielion. If a rider’s shoulders start bobbing before they pass that monument, they have blown up and will not win the race.
- But It Might Work For Us!: Every single year, someone launches an attack at the bottom of the Mur, hoping to hold off the favorites. And every single year, they blow up with 150 meters to go.
-
They Won It Five Times T-shirt
Clothing Price range: $17.25 through $20.50
How to Watch Flèche Wallonne 2026
We’ll have race highlights of the men’s and women’s races available for free on Cyclry TV, so you can catch up on the race in a quick eight minutes of your life. Tune in at some point after the race ends. ASO is usually quick to get it to us.
- United States: Peacock
- United Kingdom: TNT Sports / HBO Max
- Canada: FloBikes
- Australia: SBS
- More Civilized Countries: On a flickering CRT TV in a smoky tabac. And on your local TV channels.
We don’t know what time each of those broadcasts starts. They’ll all be taking the international signal though, so you can reverse engineer it for your locale if one of them has updated their schedule.
The men’s race starts at 1130 and is scheduled to finish at 16:11, both local time. You can miss the start but don’t miss the finish.