Tour de France 2026 GC favourites | Can any of these 10 names beat Tadej Pogačar?

July may be the month of the World Cup in 2026, but it is still above all the month of the Tour de France. Once again this year, the best riders on earth will battle for the yellow jersey, the maillot jaune, at the Tour of France. IDL Pro Cycling sets out the big favourites for the yellow jersey on the Champs-Élysées.

See also on In de Leiderstrui:
- Preview of the 2026 Tour de France route
- favorites for the points classification
- Favorites for the mountains classification
- favorites for the young rider classification
- Tour de France betting tips

2025 Tadej Pogacar
2024 Tadej Pogacar
2023 Jonas Vingegaard
2022 Jonas Vingegaard
2021 Tadej Pogacar
2020 Tadej Pogacar
2019 Egan Bernal
2018 Geraint Thomas
2017 Chris Froome
2016 Chris Froome

The first rider in our list is Tom Pidcock, in tenth place. The Brit from Pinarello-Q36.5, 26 years old, is starting his fourth Tour de France after missing the race last year. Pinarello-Q36.5 are there in 2026, and they do so with Pidcock as their undisputed team leader. He already showed good form in his home base of Andorra, where he won the MoraBanc Classic two weeks before the Tour start, after pulling out of Switzerland.

Pidcock has long been tipped for a big future in Grand Tours, but it really came through for the first time in last year’s Vuelta. There he finished third, behind Jonas Vingegaard and Joao Almeida. Even so, he is the first to admit that the Tour de France is a different kettle of fish, as he recently said on the Frodeno Going Mental podcast.

“The Tour de France is so intense: the spotlight and the media pressure, and the questions you get every day. If you are not going well, it is miserable. But it is the biggest and coolest race in the world, so if things are going well, there is no better place. I’m going into this year without expectations, I just want to race and have fun. The rest will come. I’m not going to say that I want to win a stage or make the podium, because then there is nothing to fail at. If all you can do for yourself is lose, everything goes wrong.”

If there is one rider who is not shy about stating his goals, it is Richard Carapaz. The climber from Ecuador had to let his big target for this season, the Giro d’Italia, pass him by after he had surgery for a seat-area problem. He returned in Switzerland last week.

There, Carapaz finished third in the GP Gippingen and second overall in the Tour of Switzerland behind Tadej Pogacar, proving his strong form. In his own words, the five-day WorldTour race was the perfect benchmark for the Tour de France, where he has already finished third once and won the polka-dot jersey once.

“I prepared for it as well as possible, with the Tour in mind. The start to the season was difficult, but I think we have overcome every obstacle and now I am focused. I am always highly motivated for the Tour and I have big motivations,” the climber said on his return.

In eighth place we find the man who last season rather surprisingly finished sixth in the Tour de France: Tobias Halland Johannessen. It did not come out of nowhere completely from a former winner of the Tour de l’Avenir, but the step the Norwegian made last year could still be called big.

He has carried on in the same vein in 2026, with strong performances in the UAE Tour, Tirreno-Adriatico, the Tour of the Basque Country and recently the Tour Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes. In the last two races, after a less-than-ideal start, he fought his way back into the race with plenty of attacking spirit, and in the tough final days in France he was among the best climbers.

Just before the Tour de France, Johannessen extended his contract with Uno-X through to 2028, just like his brother Anders. The dream? To finish on the podium of a Grand Tour.

When the Tour de France starts on 4 July in Barcelona, it will have been 26 April since we last saw Remco Evenepoel in action. The Belgian from Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe opted, in consultation with his team, to plan a long training block towards his main goal of the summer.

There are some question marks around Evenepoel in the high mountains. In the two major tests he rode in the spring, the Tour of Catalonia and the UAE Tour, he could not follow when the climbs became truly hard and long.

Even so, it remains a fact that we are dealing with one of the best riders of the moment, and the German team are working to get him as well prepared as possible for the Tour de France.

Place six in this list goes to Juan Ayuso, Lidl-Trek’s new signing. At the German team, they are working on a long-term project focused on winning the Tour de France, and the Spaniard’s signing is one example of that. Ayuso, still only 23, will now start La Grande Boucle for the first time as team leader.

The start takes place in his birthplace of Barcelona, but the tough mountain stages will be the key ones for him. So far, his season has been one of ups and downs. He won the Tour of Algarve and took third place in the Tour Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes as a good rehearsal for the Tour, but there were also abandonments in the Basque Country and Paris-Nice.

At Lidl-Trek, in addition to their general classification ambitions, Mads Pedersen will also start the Tour with the aim of winning the green jersey. Mattias Skjelmose and Giulio Ciccone can normally stay with Ayuso for a long time uphill.

We already had Remco Evenepoel in the list, but we also have Florian Lipowitz. In the shadow of races like the Tour Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes and the Tour of Switzerland, the shy German won the Tour of Switzerland last week.

Earlier this season, Lipo had already finished on the podium in races such as the Tour of Valencia, the Tour of Catalonia and the Tour of Romandie. The former biathlete thus proved that his third place in last year’s Tour de France was anything but a surprise.

Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe, which describes its two leaders as yin and yang, therefore starts the Tour de France with two leaders. On paper, Evenepoel is more the man for the first explosive days, while Lipowitz often comes to the fore in the real high mountains.

If there is one rider who can knock Les Blues off the front page of L’Equipe in the first half of July - if they are still in the World Cup tournament then - it is Paul Seixas. France is yearning for a contender for the yellow jersey in the Tour de France, and with the Decathlon CMA CGM prodigy they theoretically have another one.

That is, if it were not for the small matter that Seixas is only 19 years old and is about to start his first Grand Tour. But he does come with the necessary credentials. This year Seixas came closest to Pogacar in races such as Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Strade Bianche, continuing the line he set in 2025 by finishing third at the European Championships and similar races.

What it will all be worth in July in his cycling-mad homeland remains to be seen. Seixas also had a less-than-ideal lead-up after crashing and abandoning the Tour Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes.

Where have the years gone when Tour de France debutants could not think beyond perhaps tenth or twelfth place? Those days are now behind us, because in 2026 the creed is: if you are good, you rise quickly. Very quickly. That also applies to Isaac del Toro, like Seixas a recent winner of the Tour de l’Avenir.

The Mexican climber came agonisingly close to winning the Giro d’Italia last season, after which participation in the Tour de France was the next logical step. There he will ride in support of Tadej Pogacar when the situation calls for it, but you can assume that Del Toro will also be used as option B and that they will not simply throw a classification ride with him in the bin.

This season has already been another one to savour. The 22-year-old rider won the UAE Tour, Tirreno-Adriatico and more recently the Tour Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes: one more impressive than the next.

Jonas Vingegaard has already won the Giro d’Italia this season, but the ultimate goal for him and his Visma | Lease a Bike team remains, of course, the Tour de France. The Dane has been beaten there over the past two years by Tadej Pogacar, after he himself was the better rider than his Slovenian rival in 2022 and 2023.

So this July will be the sixth time in a row that we get a Vingegaard-Pogacar duel, with the route for the Dane changed slightly compared with other years. Vingegaard and his team, however, are convinced that riding the Giro can make him stronger in the Tour.

In his successful years, he outmanoeuvred Pogacar in the XXL mountain stages, which this time come towards the end. Visma | Lease a Bike chose in those years to make the whole Tour hard, which paid off in the final week. What have they come up with this time in the control room?

He is 27 years old and can win the Tour de France for the fifth time already: Tadej Pogacar is the one and only top favourite for the Tour de France. The man from Komenda simply keeps getting better and confirmed himself after winning the Tour of Switzerland that the same has been true over the past few months.

The weaknesses - if you can call them that - that once existed have also been turned into strengths. Long, hard mountain stages? Bring them on. Heat? Rarely a problem anymore. Time trials, then? Those are now won very often too. In short, we are dealing with someone who simply outclasses generations and keeps pushing the limits.

Even for Pogacar, though, the Tour de France costs a lot of energy. Last year, at the end of the race, he spoke about mental fatigue, which is hardly surprising when you look at everything that lands on him across the space of just under four weeks. Can the others find any opening at all to crack him?