2026 Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Race Preview & Stage Profiles
The details of this year's 2026 Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes are falling into place. Find the stage profiles and maps below, followed by our strategic preview of the race.
You could be forgiven for doing a double-take when seeing this race listed on the calendar. What even is the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes? And how can this possibly be the 78th edition?
The race's dates are the clearest clue to its "true" identity. It's the event previously known as the Critérium du Dauphiné and, by older fans like me, as the Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré. Having wandered westwards in recent years from its home patch in the middle of the French Alps for sponsorship and budgetary reasons, it's finally been renamed to reflect this expansion, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes being one of the 18 administrative regions within France that came into effect on 1 January 2016.
In almost every other aspect the race is the same eight-day event fans will be very familiar with, primarily as the last major stage racing test in France before next month's Tour de France. Last year's race exemplified this perfectly. Tadej Pogačar (UAD) won it, Jonas Vingegaard (TVL) finished second and Florian Lipowitz (RBH) third, that trio going on fill the same three podium positions at the Tour.
In the absence of those three (Pogačar opting for the Tour de Suisse, Vingegaard resting/training after winning the Giro and Lipowitz opting for the Tour of Slovenia), this edition is shaping up as a contest between the sport's young guns, headed by Paul Seixas (DCT), Juan Ayuso (LTK) and Isaac Del Toro (UAD).
Yet, while the pre-race hype points to one of these three as the likely winner, the cast of likely contenders also features Mattias Skjelmose (LTK), Netcompany-Ineos duo Oscar Onley and Kévin Vauquelin, Dani Martínez (RBH), Matteo Jorgenson (TVL), João Almeida (UAD) and Tobias Johannessen (UXM).
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