The Tour de France Femmes confirmed its course for 2026 this week, setting up next year's event as the longest iteration of the race in the women's tour history.

The 2026 course will run in nine stages starting in Lausanne, Switzerland, on August 1st and continuing through the finish line in Nice, France, on August 9th.

Cyclists will cover a total of 1,175 kilometers, with 18,795 meters of climbing.

The course will feature three flat stages and three hilly stages as well as two mountain stages and one individual time trial, with riders tackling Mont Ventoux — an iconic climb from the men's event — for the first time.

Though 2026 will only by the fifth edition of the modern Tour de France Femmes, the race will make its debut in a standalone time slot one full week after the men’s race ends, with recent record viewership fueling the move to separate the races rather than continue the previous tactic of scheduling the two events back-to-back.

"We no longer need men for the Tour de France Femmes to exist,"  said race director Marion Rousse at Thursday's course unveiling. "There's no need to have the men's race as a platform to launch the women's race. Now people are waiting to see us."

"People have embraced us," Rousse continued. "The new dates, separate to the men, prove it."

The 2025 Tour de France Femmes came in hot, as Pauline Ferrand-Prévôt crossed the finish line to become the race’s first French winner in 36 years — all in front of a record audience.

Cyclist Jeannie Longo was the most recent Frenchwoman to win the race back in 1989, though then it called the Tour de France Feminin. No French athletes has won the men's Tour de France since 1985 champion Bernard Hinault.

This year's Tour de France Femmes drew a total of 25.7 million French viewers across linear and digital platforms, up 33.6% from 2024 to make this year’s edition the most-watched in event history.

An average of 4.4 million French viewers tuned in on Sunday to see Ferrand-Prévôt clinch the yellow jersey in the final stage of the race.

After picking up a gold medal at the 2024 Olympics in Paris, Ferrand-Prévot also became the first woman to win the Tour and the Paris-Roubaix cycling race in the same calendar year.

"I came back on the road after my Olympic title and I said I will try to win the Tour de France in the next three years," said Ferrand-Prevot after Sunday's finish.

"My teammates worked super hard for me all week long. I just want to say thank you and congrats to them, to my entire team."

The Tour de France Femmes was resurrected in 2022 after a 33-year suspension, with interest in the women’s cycling event soaring ever since.

Annemiek van Vleuten of the Netherlands clinched the Tour de France Femmes on Sunday, bringing home the yellow jersey in the historic race.

The 39-year-old beat out her fellow Dutch rider Demi Vollering by 3 minutes and 48 seconds, with Poland’s Katarzyna Niewiadoma finishing third.

The eight-stage race was the first women’s Tour de France since 1989, serving as a turning point for the sport.

“I’m super proud to be the first winner of the Tour de France for women, of this new version,” Van Vleuten said. “I hope it’s a big start and we can build this into an even bigger event. It’s a milestone to win the first one of, hopefully, many more.”

That she finished the race at all — let alone took the victory — is a testament to her perseverance. She battled through a stomach bug in first half of the week and came close to quitting, the Guardian reported, and she called her win “a little bit of a miracle.”

Forty-four racers from 24 teams competed in the Tour de France Femmes, which kicked off as the men’s race wrapped on the Champs-Elysees in Paris and covered 639 miles in eastern France.

“The real relevance of us having a Tour de France is that now young girls or women in general can turn on the TV and watch women racing for the biggest race in the world,” veteran cyclist Ashleigh Moolman Pasio told Just Women’s Sports. “And that’s when the sport really grows. Because then the depth grows, and suddenly you have young girls who aspire to become pro cyclists.”

The race marks a significant push for progress, but more work still needs to be done, with the competition’s purse a tenth of men’s €2.2 million prize.