Tadej Pogačar, the Slovenian who has defined the modern Tour de France, sat beside his UAE Team Emirates teammate Isaac del Toro at the pre-race press conference in Barcelona and delivered a statement that immediately recast the conversation around the 2026 edition. “I hope Isaac wins the Tour de France,” Pogačar said, before adding that the 22-year-old Mexican was among several riders capable of challenging for the yellow jersey. The remark, reported widely across Spanish-language outlets, came as the peloton gathered for a Grand Départ that, for the first time since 1997, includes a Mexican rider.

Del Toro, who finished second at the Giro d’Italia in 2025 and won the Tirreno-Adriatico this spring, will serve as a mountain lieutenant for Pogačar but carries his own general classification ambitions. His presence marks only the third Mexican participation in Tour history, after Raúl Alcalá and Miguel Arroyo, a gap of 29 years that Mexican media have framed as a revival of national cycling. The 113th edition begins on Saturday with a 19.6-kilometre team time trial through Barcelona, the third Spanish start in the race’s history, before crossing into France for a 3,320-kilometre route that includes five summit finishes and a penultimate stage over the Galibier and Alpe d’Huez that organisers have called the hardest ever placed on the eve of Paris.

The duel between Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard remains the central axis of the race. The Dane, fresh from a Giro victory that completed his set of grand tour titles, arrives with a season tally of twelve wins and, as Australian analysts note, a level of confidence that has led some rivals to tip him over Pogačar. Yet the Slovenian’s spring campaign—victories at Strade Bianche, Milan-San Remo, the Tour of Flanders, and Liège-Bastogne-Liège, followed by dominant stage-race wins in Romandie and Switzerland—has reinforced his status as the rider to beat. French observers, meanwhile, have focused on the emergence of 19-year-old Paul Seixas, who became the first Frenchman in 19 years to win a World Tour stage race and pushed Pogačar at Liège, prompting the champion to remark that the peloton must “keep working hard if we want to keep fighting for victories, before he destroys everybody.”

German-language coverage has highlighted the tension within the Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe camp, where Remco Evenepoel’s combative exchanges with journalists during a team press conference contrasted with the calm of his co-leader Florian Lipowitz. Evenepoel, who abandoned the 2025 Tour with exhaustion, bristled at questions about team tactics and learning from teammates, while Lipowitz, third in last year’s race, stressed a harmonious working relationship. The German contingent of twelve riders—the largest since 2017—includes Lipowitz, veteran John Degenkolb, and Georg Steinhauser, nephew of Jan Ullrich, making his Tour debut.

The opening week will quickly test the contenders, with a punchy finish in Barcelona on stage two and a first mountain test at Les Angles on stage three before the Pyrenees deliver the Tourmalet on stage six. The decisive Alpine sequence, culminating in back-to-back days at Alpe d’Huez, is designed, in the words of race director Christian Prudhomme, to ensure that “anything can still happen, whatever the gap between the yellow jersey and his rivals.” The race concludes on the Champs-Élysées on 26 July.