Tour de France

Tour de France 2025 Route: Ventoux and Crushing ‘Queen Stage’ Headline Course to Test Tadej Pogačar

No cobbles or gravel, but plenty of drama should be delivered in a route heavy on uphill finals and explosive breakaway stages.

Updated
Jim Cotton
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Photo: Gruber Images / Velo

Mont Ventoux, the Col de la Loze, and a mountain time trial headline a Tour de France route that will test Tadej Pogačar.

ASO chief Christian Prudhomme presented the parcours for the 2025 Tour de France to a peloton of VIPs at the Palais des Congrès on Tuesday.

Marion Rousse was also there in Paris to detail the route for the Tour de France Femmes Avec Zwift.

The men’s Tour de France rolls out of the northern city Lille on July 5 and remains entirely on French soil.

It will contain only 33 flat time trial kilometers, a triplet of mountain pain in the Pyrénées, and a high-altitude endgame through the Alps.

The 2025 edition will wrap up on July 27 with its traditional champagne and bunch sprint stage in spectacular central Paris.

All told, the race tracks 3,320 km and climbs 51,500 meters to make it a touch shorter than this year, with slightly less elevation gain.

The sprinters should see chances in the race’s seven flat stages.

A good or bad Tour de France for Pogačar?

Rider race schedules are some way from being confirmed, but early indications are that there will be another “Big 4” battle next July.

Pogačar, Jonas Vingegaard, Remco Evenepoel, and Primož Roglič are all likely to be lining out next July in Lille.

2024 dominator Pogačar will be in two minds as he reviews a route that will stretch his yellow jersey defense.

Back-to-back mountain stages and a hatful of aggression-favoring hilly stages look like a veritable Pogi playground. However some of the headline summits – the Loze, Hautacam, and Ventoux – are those where he has been put on the ropes by his archrival Vingegaard.

The ASO’s prestigious route reveal Tuesday was attended by a who’s-who of pro cycling.

History-making speedster Biniam Girmay and record stage-winner Mark Cavendish were among those at the suit ‘n’ tie style presentation.

None of the “Big 4” were there in person but were no doubt taking notes from afar. For them, their journey to the 2025 Tour de France began Tuesday.

Velo will have full stage-by-stage details as they become available.

In the meantime, here are the highlights:

Week one: No cobbles, a late rest day, and a sprinter in yellow

Kristoff won stage 1 into Nice and took the yellow jersey in 2020. (Photo: Stuart Franklin/Getty Images)

A sprinter will likely wear the first yellow jersey of the 2025 Tour de France.

Stage 1 loops in and out of Lille. The hilly course stays away from the local pavé of Paris-Roubaix, and a long flat finale should guarantee a bunch sprint.

It will make a rare opportunity for the fast-men, who’ve not had a chance to wear yellow since Alexander Kristoff wore the maillot after stage 1 in 2020.

Stage 2 tracks north toward the coast with a saw-tooth course that packs two short, steep climbs into the final. At 212km, it’s the longest of the race.

The sprinters have a second chance on stage 3 in a stage that finishes on the coast in Dunkirk.

The hilly, windswept terrain of stage 4 from Amiens to Rouen could bring puncheurs, classics riders, and GC contenders out to play in what could be a wildly entertaining Tuesday.

The race’s only flat time trial arrives on stage 5. Thirty three fast kilometers in and out of Caen could see gaps of around one minute and will for sure shift the GC pack.

The peloton will then continue heading west and toward deepest Brittany.

Stages 6 and 7 should see fireworks with hilltop finishes on the 10 percent kicker to Vire Normandy and the 15 percent ramps of the Mûr de Bretagne respectively.

Stages 8 and 9 will be for the sprinters before the race heads south toward the twisty, tricky badlands of central France.

Mayhem in the Massif for the French national day

Stage 10 on July 14 should be a beastly end to the opening phase of the Tour. Seven categorized climbs are stuffed into a 163km romp through the Massif Central.

With 4,400m of climbing, route organizers are promising this will be a “very demanding” day to celebrate the French national holiday.

The first “week” of the 2025 Tour de France could drag for any riders already being bothered by the broom wagon.

The first rest day of the race will fall one day later than tradition. The peloton’s day off arrives after 10 days of racing on Tuesday July 15.

It’s a schedule tweak designed to ensure home fans have something to cheer and beer for on the July 14 national celebration.

Week two: Triple uphill trouble in the Pyrénées

Week two includes a mountain time trial up to Peyragudes. (Photo by MARCO BERTORELLO/AFP via Getty Images)

The Pyrénées will serve three portions of punishment in the middle of week two.

Stages 12, 13, and 14 all pack fierce uphill finishes in a triplet that could make-or-break GC hopes way before the second rest day.

Stage 12 will scale the 14km, 8 percent Hautacam for the first high mountain finish of the race.

A 13km mountain time trial from the valley town of Loudenvielle up to the Peyragudes altiport on stage 13 could crack GC contenders and leave multi-minute gaps.

Pogačar will no doubt be pleased with this all-out climbing test.

The third and final installment of Pyrénéan pain will be the biggest.

Stage 14 will be an old-school “queen stage” that includes the Tourmalet, Aspin, and Peyresourde. A mountaintop finale to Superbagnères is the final nail of a stage touted to climb some 5,000m in total.

All those mountains are bookended by days for the breakaway or tough-guy sprinters on stages 11 to Toulouse and 15 to Carcassonne respectively.

The peloton then transfers east for a rest day in Montpellier, where a special treat awaits.

Week three: Ventoux, Loze, and a return to Paris

Mont Ventoux rears its bald head on stage 16. (Photo: Tim de Waele/Getty Images)

The third week starts in fearsome fashion.

Stage 16 out of Montpellier on July 22 starts flat but finishes directly skyward with a summit finish on the hardest, 16km, 9 percent, side of Mont Ventoux.

The beastly “bald mountain” last featured in the race in 2021 but hasn’t been a summit finish since Chris Froome cantered his way up in his cleats in 2016.

Sprinters will climb the Ventoux inches in front of the broom wagon.

The peloton’s speedsters will be wanting to to save their legs for stage 17 and what will be the last guaranteed sprint before Paris.

A crusher of a queen stage

Stage 18 includes monster climbs both old and new in a cruel Alpine “queen stage.” It’s so tough it will overshadow even the onslaught of stage 14 in the Pyrénées.

The Tour’s old favorites the Col du Glandon and Col de la Madeleine come first before the peloton faces the modern monster that is the Col de la Loze.

This newly-paved climb featured for the first time in 2020 and is becoming a new-found classic. The stupid-steep slope was the scene of Pogačar’s race-ending jour sans in 2023.

The 2,300m Col de la Loze will be the high point of the Tour and concludes a three-climb killer. This stage packs 5,500m of ascent in what ASO says is a Tour de France record.

The peloton will be whacked with another Alpine assault just 24 hours later.

Stage 19 is just 130km long and packs four categorized climbs before a summit finish on the 19km La Plagne.

Short, explosive mountain stages like this are becoming Prudhomme’s trademark and typically cause trouble for nearly the whole peloton. This multi-mountain test will push the capacity of even the most durable, fatigue-resistant riders.

The yellow jersey will be confirmed at the high-altitude finish line on La Plagne.

The rolling roads of stage 20 to Pontarlier should suit any attacker with power left in their legs.

From there, the peloton takes a long transfer back to Paris for a final stage of champagne and a sprint.

Ooh la la!

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