Tour de France 2025 route reveal: Mont Ventoux and Col de la Loze return for 100% French edition

An opening summit finish 10 days deep but on Bastille Day should make up for the lack of early mountains on the agenda for the 112th edition of the Tour de France, which runs from July 5-27 next year. What the opening week or so lacks in uphill excitement it makes up in a series of tough stages playing out in northern France – and although there are seven stages designated for the sprinters over the course of the three weeks, not one of them is entirely flat.

Five summit finishes in four mountain ranges includes the return of Mont Ventoux in Stage 16 to kick off a ferocious final week. Before that, an uphill time trial in the Pyrenees is sandwiched between two summit showdowns, while the final week also includes the infamous Col de la Loze, the highest peak in the 2025 race this year tackled from the eastern approach for the first time.

Our man Felix Lowe takes a closer look at a parcours that seems more and more appealing the longer you look at it and consider the myriad permutations.

After Florence, Bilbao and Copenhagen comes… Lille. For the first time in four years – since Brest in the Covid-affected 2021 Tour – the race kicks off on French soil. And French soil is where it will remain all the way to Paris: an edition taking place entirely in France for the first time since 2020.

The historic capital of Flanders (the most northerly city in France and the nation’s fourth largest) should play host to a ding-dong bunch sprint – the first of seven ‘flat’ stages that suit the peloton’s fast men. While this probably won’t be enough to see Mark Cavendish come out of retirement for a second time, it will ensure that the last two green jerseys Jasper Philipsen and Biniam Girmay have ample competition in the fast finishes.

It also means that we should see a pure sprinter in yellow for the first time since Alexander Kristoff donned the maillot jaune after the sodden 2020 curtain raiser in Nice.

Given the northern location, Christian Prudhomme and his friends at ASO must have been tempted to include cobbles in the parcours. But with the pavé featuring heavily in 2022, the race organisers have resisted scratching that particular itch.

Instead, we have punchy double-digit gradients and a ramped finale in Stage 2 to Boulogne-sur-Mer followed by two days of potential crosswinds. Stage 3 to Dunkerque concludes with an exposed section after the final categorised climb, while the infamous Picardy plain is prone to blustery wind and could play host to some havoc in Stage 4 to Rouen.

Taking place after the opening time trial in and around Caen, Stage 6 is a ‘flat’ stage that nevertheless includes 3,500m of climbing and a testing 10% peak ahead of the finish in Vire Normande – making the opening week anything but plain sailing.

Indeed, Friday’s Stage 7 in Brittany concludes with the same double ascent of the Mur-de-Bretagne that saw Mathieu van der Poel take the win – and yellow jersey – in 2021. Two pops at the climb known as the Breton Alpe d’Huez will at the very least make up for the disappointing absence of the actual hairpin bends of the mythical Dutch Mountain, which were strongly tipped for inclusion this year.

With the French national holiday of Quatorze Juillet falling on a Monday, the organisers have bucked tradition and delayed the first rest day by 24 hours. After putting on a gamble with two back-to-back transitional sprint stages over the second weekend of the race, ASO have tossed a bone to the French public with an opening summit finish on the Puy de Sancy on Bastille Day.

Reaching 1,885, the Puy-de-Sancy is the tallest peak in the Massif Central – and while it’s just 3.3km at 8% it is also the seventh Cat. 2 climb on a day that features 4,400m of vertical gain. This should make for spectacular fireworks at the resort of Mont-Dore as the GC battle finally clicks into action.

All in all, there are five summit finishes in the 2025 Tour with climbs in the Massif Central, the Pyrenees, the Alps and the Jura all featuring, for a total elevation gain of 51,550m.

Sandwiching the second time trial, summit finishes at Hautacam (13.6km at 7.8%) and at Superbagneres (12.4km at 7.5%) should spice up the second week and make up for the lack of altitude over the first nine days of racing.

For those fearing a Pogacar cake walk, Hautacam is where Vingegaard really turned the screw during his first Tour win over the Slovenian in 2022. Stage 19 to Superbagneres – a climb synonymous with the Fignon-verses-LeMond duel of 1989 – also includes the Tourmalet taken on via the lesser-used Luz-Saint-Sauveur side and the Col d’Aspin via Payolle.

A total of 44km against the clock will feature with a 33km ITT around Caen in Stage 5 suiting rouleurs and powerhouse specialists alike, but an 11km race of truth in the Pyrenees that is pretty much all uphill. What the second test lacks in length it makes up in difficulty, with the riders barely given two kilometres of flat to warm up the legs ahead of the punishing ascent to Peyragudes, with its ramped altiport finale (where we’ll see more zigzagging than a Spice Girls concert).

For the first time since 2016, the riders will experience a summit finish atop the barren Giant of Provence. That previous occasion spawned scenes of chaos and confusion as poor weather brought the finish lower down the climb to Chalet Reynard, where Thomas De Gendt held on for the win.

You’d be forgiven if you cannot remember the Belgian’s win that day, for it was very much overshadowed by the bizarre sight of Chris Froome running up through a sea of spectators after an ill-timed mechanical…

Of course, the Tour has visited Ventoux since - two times, in fact, with back-to-back ascents in 2021 ahead of a finish in Malaucene on a day Wout van Aert took the spoils, Jonas Vingegaard came of age and Tadej Pogacar retained the yellow jersey.

Four years on, Mont Ventoux (15.7km at 8.8%) is tackled at the end of an otherwise entirely flat 172km stage crossing the sweltering south of France. It will be fascinating to see how the two riders who have won the last five Tours between them – Messieurs Pogacar and Vingegaard – fare on an unforgiving legend of the Tour that they have yet to come up against during their illustrious careers to date.

Three days from Paris, the battle for yellow will intensify during a 171km Stage 18 that includes 5,500m of vertical gain. After ascents of the Glandon and Madeleine – where the riders reach 2,000m for the first time in 2025 – the peloton heads to the towering Col de la Loze for the third time in Tour history.

Unlike the previous two editions – in 2020 and 2023 – the tough, irregular and exposed climb is tackled via its easter flank from Courchevel. The highest point in the race at 2,304m, the Col de la Loze is best known for its final four-kilometre stretch that plays out entirely on a cycle track.

Pogacar has twice conceded time to his main rival on the Col de la Loze – 17 seconds to Primoz Roglic in 2020 and a whopping six minutes to Vingegaard in 2023 – so the triple champion will have to exorcise his demons if he wants to make this less of a bogey climb.

Rumours of a return to Alpe d’Huez were apparently just that. Instead, after the lofty Loze comes two days in the mountains that could decide the Tour. What Stage 19 from Albertville to La Plagne lacks in length, it makes up with a spicy succession of five climbs packed into 130km – including the Col de Saisies and Cormet de Roselend. The seemingly interminable 19.1km slog up to La Plagne could catch out those with weary legs and will bring back memories of Stephen Roche’s epic duel with Pedro Delgado in 1987.

The final competitive stage of the race heads to the Jura with a relentlessly hilly 185km test providing the last-chance saloon for GC contenders and stage hunters alike. The finish is in Pontarlier, the capital of absinthe – and it’s worth remembering that when the race last ventured to these parts, in 2011, the breakaway came home 35 minutes ahead of the pack…

Fifty years after the first stage finish on the most famous boulevard in Paris, the race culminates with a sprint showdown on the Champs-Elysees. After last year’s Olympics saw the organisers opt for a time trial finale in Nice instead, all eyes will once again be on the French capital and the fast men.

Sure, there are no cobbles, and no showpiece Alpine finale, while the eagerly anticipated Ventoux-Alpe d’Huez double has not materialised. But the 112th edition still packs a punch. It may take 10 days before the first summit finish comes along, but the opening week in the north of France is no picnic, with potential winds and adverse conditions dovetailing with some leg-sapping routes and punchy finishes which are a far cry from the succession of sprint stages of old.

When the mountains come, they stay for the long haul. There are the odd days of rest in between – with sprint finishes in Toulouse, Carcassonne and Valance breaking things up – but the truth is that none of the Tour’s seven sprint stages are remotely flat, and all could cause an upset.

On paper, this route should provide the perfect canvas upon which Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard write the next chapter of their rivalry. There are enough potential banana skins for the three-time Slovenian champion – notably the Col de la Loze, whose length and irregular gradients have never suited Pogacar’s style.

There is also that element of surprise, with neither champion having ever ridden a competitive race up Mont Ventoux.

After three grands departs abroad, the bold decision to not once venture outside France is to be applauded. That said, on the one hand, we have a Tour de France taking place entirely within France’s borders, but on the other, a Tour with more transfer kilometres than actual raced kilometres, an indictment to cycling’s ongoing struggle to alleviate its burden on the climate crisis.

It’s a fool’s game to make a call so far out from the race – especially given the injury torment suffered in recent years by both Pogacar and Vingegaard. But if all goes to plan, a certain Slovenian will come within another overall victory of joining the five-Tour club occupied by Anquetil, Merckx, Hinault and Indurain.

To do so, however, the 26-year-old will have to not only prove himself on Mont Ventoux, but also climbs where he has suffered in the past - notably Hautacam and the Col de la Loze. There is also the drive and determination of Jonas Vingegaard to contend with, the 27-year-old Dane eager to make up for last year's injury-plagued pursuit of a third yellow jersey.

This will be a Tour to remember and anything but the one-way traffic we witnessed in 2024. What's more, a certain Remco Evenepoel will be one year older and must be factored in given those two time trials on the menu.

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