Tadej Pogačar Wins a Record-Equalling Fifth Tour de France
Five stage wins, a 29-year-old Alpe d'Huez record gone, the fastest Tour in history and a place alongside Merckx, Anquetil, Hinault and Induráin as a five-time winner.
By Miles Ashworth · 27 Jul 2026 · 3 min read · Canada edition
Tadej Pogačar at the 2026 Tour de France. Photo: Kiril Simeonovski, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).Slovenia's Tadej Pogačar won the 2026 Tour de France in Paris on Sunday 26 July, finishing 6 minutes 26 seconds ahead of Belgium's Remco Evenepoel. It is his fifth Tour title, which puts him alongside Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Induráin as the only five-time winners in the race's history.
At 27 years, 10 months and 5 days old, he is also the youngest rider ever to reach five. Merckx was 29.
"I'm speechless. It's an incredible day, there was an incredible atmosphere," Pogačar said in Paris. "I don't know how I do it. I now have to find a new goal to chase."
How the Tour was won
The race started with a team time trial in Barcelona on 4 July and covered 3,245 kilometres over 21 stages. Pogačar won five of them: stages 3, 6, 10, 14 and 19. He won in each week of the race, the pattern of a rider controlling a Grand Tour rather than just surviving it.
His biggest rival never got the chance to fight the final week. Denmark's Jonas Vingegaard, the 2022 and 2023 champion, crashed on stage 15, broke his collarbone and had to leave the race. "Shame that Jonas and others crashed out of this Tour," Pogačar said. "I hope we can all fight again next year."
Behind Pogačar and Evenepoel, Mexico's Isaac del Toro, Pogačar's 22-year-old UAE Team Emirates XRG teammate, took third in his first Tour and won the white jersey as best young rider. French riders Paul Seixas and Lenny Martinez were fourth and fifth, giving the home crowds plenty to cheer. Mads Pedersen won the green points jersey and Richard Carapaz the polka-dot jersey for the mountains.
The records along the way
The stage 19 win came at the top of Alpe d'Huez, the 13.8km climb with 21 hairpin bends that is one of the most famous in cycling. Pogačar rode it in 35 minutes 27 seconds, breaking a time Marco Pantani had held since 1997. That record had survived nearly three decades of the sport's best climbers.
He also broke his own record on the Col du Tourmalet, climbing it in 43:12 against the 45:32 he set while racing Vingegaard in 2023. And the Tour as a whole was the fastest ever. Pogačar covered the route in 73 hours, 56 minutes and 26 seconds, an average of 43.326km/h.
There was one more milestone that says a lot about his consistency. This was his seventh Tour, and he has finished on the podium in every one of them: winning in 2020, 2021, 2024, 2025 and 2026, and second in 2022 and 2023. Seven consecutive podiums is a new record, beating the five in a row of Induráin and Vingegaard. "I've ridden seven Tours already, and I've always finished on the podium," he said. "You might think this is a fairytale, it's incredible for me too."
The records still ahead of him
Pogačar now has 26 Tour stage wins, nine behind Mark Cavendish's all-time record of 35. They are very different kinds of numbers. Cavendish's wins came almost entirely in flat sprint finishes. Pogačar's have come in the mountains, in time trials and in everything in between.
He has also worn the yellow jersey 71 times. Merckx's record is 111, with Hinault on 79. Both are records people now talk about him chasing.
The finale in Paris
The last day belonged to someone else. Mathieu van der Poel won the final stage on a circuit that included the climb of Montmartre, and Pogačar, safe in yellow, faded on the third ascent and rolled in 30th.
Asked what comes next, including whether he would ride the Vuelta a España, which he has never won, he was noncommittal. "Let's see," he said. "Let's just not jump ahead of ourselves, and enjoy this moment."
