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Ones to Watch at This Year’s Tour de France

Harold DaltonBy 9 Mins Read

The battle among the 2026 Tour de France favorites is about to begin. And between established kings hunting historical doubles, a Belgian dialing in his threshold power at a new super-team, a terrifying Mexican climbing prodigy, and a German biathlete-turned-podium-threat, the race for the yellow jersey has never looked this combustible.

Here is our rundown of the GC contenders, sprinters, and everyone else carrying the heaviest expectations into July.

Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG)

  • Best Tour Finish: 1st
  • First Tour Participation: 2020
  • Age: 27
  • Trivia: Can join Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault, and Miguel Indurain in the exclusive five-times winners club with a victory this year.

Tadej Pogačar enters every single bike race as the default favorite, and the 2026 Tour de France is no exception. After smashing the monuments and tearing the legs off the peloton at the Tour de Suisse, he arrives in Barcelona with momentum. With a parcours that visits all five of France’s major mountain ranges, Pogacar will have plenty of opportunities to launch the kinds of attacks he’s famous for as he targets his record-equaling fifth Tour de France victory. It’s probably your last chance to buy the They Won it Five Times t-shirt before we have to redesign it, because Tadej is our overwhelming favorite.

Jonas Vingegaard (Visma | Lease a Bike)

  • Best Tour Finish: 1st
  • First Tour Participation: 2021
  • Age: 29
  • Trivia: Won the 2026 Giro d’Italia in dominant fashion, making him the eighth rider to win the Triple Crown of all three grand tours.

A generational talent whose only real negative is that he’s up against someone who could arguably be called the greatest of all time, Jonas Vingegaard is the a stage-racing expert. Vingegaard calculates, suffocates, and destroys his rivals on long, high-altitude gradients. He was dominant at the Giro d’Italia last month, and Visma | Lease a Bike knows how to protect their leader through a difficult three week Tour. If Vingegaard’s recovery from May has gone according to plan and he hasn’t cooked his engine, he remains Pogacar’s most lethal rival.

Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull – BORA – hansgrohe)

Remco Evenepoel doesn’t do subtlety. The Belgian spent the better part of a month in Tenerife punishing himself at altitude and was more than happy to casually drop his massive FTP numbers to the press to psych out the peloton. With the opening stage featuring a time trial format where individual times count, Remco could immediately put serious time into the pure climbers on day one. If he can survive the steepest Alpine gradients without blowing up, his threshold power makes him a massive threat under the Red Bull banner.

Florian Lipowitz (Red Bull – BORA – hansgrohe)

  • Best Tour Finish: 3rd
  • First Tour Participation: 2025
  • Age: 25
  • Trivia: Originally trained as a professional biathlete before switching to cycling to recover from an Osgood-Schlatter knee injury.

Florian Lipowitz emerged as the breakout star of last year’s Tour, shedding his winter-sports background to comfortably hang with the elites in the high mountains. Entering the race as a co-leader alongside Evenepoel, the German adds immense depth to the Red Bull squad. If the top favorites spend too much time staring at each other, “Lipo” could quietly cause them problems.

Isaac Del Toro (UAE Team Emirates-XRG)

  • Best Tour Finish: Debut
  • First Tour Participation: 2026
  • Age: 22
  • Trivia: Reeled off overall victories at the UAE Tour, Tirreno-Adriatico, and the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes this season.

The 22-year-old Mexican phenom has spent the 2026 season collecting stage race titles for fun, culminating in a mountain mogging at the Tour Auvergne. He has the punch to attack and the engine to sustain it. While this is his first Tour de France appearance, his ability to climb with the best in the world means UAE Team Emirates-XRG has the most lethal two-pronged attack in the race.

Paul Seixas (Decathlon-CMA CGM)

Paul Seixas hasn’t even taken his first pedal stroke at the Tour de France, but the teenager is already at the center of a transfer bidding war that could upheave cycling’s salary market. The hype, however, is justified. Which comes at a price: he will carry the weight of French expectation on his shoulders. Seixas has the skillset to turn his debut into a breakout blockbuster.

Back in 2020, we didn’t shy away from picking debutant Tadej Pogacar as one to watch. And we’ll do the same for Seixas here, but note he’s unlikely to win the entire thing this year.

Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Premier Tech)

  • Stage Victories: 10
  • First Tour Participation: 2019
  • Age: 28
  • Trivia: Ripped up his summer schedule and skipped the Tour de Suisse to race the Baloise Belgium Tour, purely because it offered better sprint preparation.

Jasper Philipsen arrives at the 2026 Tour de France with a target painted on his back. Even when the Alpecin-Premier Tech train misfires, he can improvise, surf wheels, and launch with devastating accuracy. With the new points system heavily rewarding flat stage winners, Philipsen is the obvious favorite to command the green jersey.

Biniam Girmay (NSN Cycling Team)

  • Stage Victories: 3
  • First Tour Participation: 2023
  • Age: 26
  • Trivia: Claimed the Tour’s green jersey in 2024 and already has three wins under his belt this season, including the Clásica de Almería.

If Philipsen is the king of the drag race, Biniam Girmay is the master of the rolling, attritional sprint. The Eritrean superstar thrives when the road kicks up and the pure sprinters start hyperventilating. He ticks all the necessary boxes to take back the green jersey, especially if he leverages his climbing legs to infiltrate breakaways and mop up intermediate sprint points on days when the heavier fast men are just trying to survive the time cut.

Tim Merlier (Soudal Quick-Step)

  • Stage Victories: 1
  • First Tour Participation: 2021
  • Age: 33
  • Trivia: Widely feared in the peloton for his explosive acceleration and rare ability to recover from horrific positioning.

Soudal Quick-Step is bringing a somewhat schizophrenic roster to the Tour this year, attempting to balance Mikel Landa’s climbing ambitions with a dedicated sprint train for Tim Merlier. But if anyone can justify splitting a squad’s resources, it is the veteran Belgian. Merlier possesses a raw, violent finishing kick that very few riders can match. He doesn’t always need a pristine, textbook lead-out. He routinely gets boxed in, drops the shoulder, finds a microscopic gap, and still wins by a bike length.

Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek)

  • Stage Victories: 2
  • First Tour Participation: 2020
  • Age: 30
  • Trivia: Completed a staggering Vuelta and Giro points classification double in 2025.

Mads Pedersen is a completely different terrifying animal compared to the rest of the sprinters on this list. He doesn’t want an easy, straightforward 150-kilometer cruise into a flat finish. He wants terrible weather, brutal crosswinds, and exhausting, punchy transition stages that drain the life out of the pure fast men. He heads to France desperately hunting the green jersey to complete his ultimate Grand Tour points treble.

Tom Pidcock (Pinarello-Q36.5)

  • Stage Victories: 1
  • First Tour Participation: 2022
  • Age: 26
  • Trivia: Just won the brutal 2026 Andorra MoraBanc Classica, surviving a late, aggressive attack from Sepp Kuss on the Coll de la Botella.

Tom Pidcock is a danger in the high mountains. He can descend better than anybody else in the peloton, sprint from small groups, and attack with the pure explosiveness of a one-day Classics specialist. Now fronting the Pinarello-Q36.5 project, he has the tactical freedom to terrorize the peloton as a pure stage hunter. With the 2026 route visiting all five French mountain ranges and returning to Alpe d’Huez—the site of his iconic 2022 summit victory—Pidcock is a threat on any given day the GC favorites hesitate or look at each other for too long.

Maxim Van Gils (Red Bull – BORA – hansgrohe)

  • Stage Victories: 0
  • First Tour Participation: 2023
  • Age: 26
  • Trivia: Just won Stage 6 of the 2026 Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes with a massive sprint on the summit finish in Crest-Voland.

Maxim Van Gils is rapidly developing into a terrifyingly consistent puncheur-climber. He showed his teeth at the Tour Auvergne, blowing up the race from a breakaway and winning the Crest-Voland summit finish. While he will undoubtedly be tasked with protecting Remco Evenepoel and Florian Lipowitz on the hardest alpine days, Red Bull may not want to keep a rider with this much horsepower on a leash permanently. On medium mountain days and punchy, explosive uphill finishes, Van Gils is a prime candidate to snatch a stage win from a reduced group.

Tobias Halland Johannessen (Uno-X Mobility)

  • Stage Victories: 0
  • First Tour Participation: 2023
  • Age: 26
  • Trivia: Won the 2021 Tour de l’Avenir, marking him as a generational climbing talent who is realizing his WorldTour potential.

Uno-X always arrives at the Tour de France ready to instigate chaos, and Tobias Halland Johannessen is their designated mountain disruptor. He just proved he can hang with the absolute best in the world, claiming impressive podium finishes on two of the hardest climbs in France during the Tour Auvergne.

Pablo Torres (UAE Team Emirates-XRG)

  • Stage Victories: 0 (Debut)
  • First Tour Participation: 2026
  • Age: 20
  • Trivia: Played a crucial super-domestique role for Isaac Del Toro at the Tour Auvergne, setting up the race-winning attack.

You have to be a freak of nature to crack the UAE Team Emirates-XRG Tour de France roster at just 20 years old, but Pablo Torres fits the description. The young Spaniard is rapidly developing into one of the most impressive climbing domestiques in the peloton. He will spend the majority of July burying himself into the ground for Tadej Pogačar and Isaac Del Toro.

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