Pogačar Arrives in Switzerland: Tour de Suisse 2026 Preview and Start List

The Tour de Suisse rolls out from Frauenfeld next Saturday — eight stages, 1,308 kilometres, 22,500 metres of climbing through five Swiss cantons and one canton-in-transit (Liechtenstein on Stage 4). The race finishes June 21 in Andermatt, on a course designed by organisers to give Tadej Pogačar a final pre-Tour challenge that is hard enough to test fitness but short enough to avoid burning the form he needs in July.

This is Pogačar's race. He skipped the Dauphiné — now branded the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes — to come here. The Suisse has not won a Tour de France in nine years, but for the riders who choose it as their pre-Grand Boucle peak (Roglič in 2019 and 2020, Skjelmose in 2024), it offers two clear advantages: less crowded racing, and high-altitude stages that mimic what they will face in the Pyrenees and the Alps in three weeks.

The Course

The race opens with a 9-kilometre prologue in Frauenfeld — flat, fast, designed to give the time-trial specialists an immediate GC margin to defend. Stages 2 and 3 ride east through the Thurgau and the Appenzell, neither of them mountain stages but both of them undulating enough that a small breakaway might steal time on a sleeping peloton.

Stage 4 is the queen stage of the first half: 178 kilometres over the Splügen and the San Bernardino, with a finish in Bellinzona at the foot of the Ticino valley. Two HC climbs, 4,800 metres of climbing, the longest sustained effort the race will demand before the final weekend.

Stages 5 and 6 cross the Italian side of Ticino through Locarno, then turn north again into the Bernese Oberland for the Sustenpass — one of the highest paved passes in Switzerland at 2,224 metres, and a climb the Tour de Suisse uses three years out of four. The finish in Engelberg is a town with deep cycling history and one of the few stages this year that finishes with a downhill run-in rather than a summit.

Stage 7 is the decisive day: Engelberg → Andermatt via the Sustenpass (second pass of the race), the Grimsel, and the Furka, then summit-finish on the Oberalppass above Andermatt. 168 kilometres. 5,200 metres of climbing. The kind of stage that does not reward riders who arrived in Switzerland still finding their form.

Stage 8 is a 26-kilometre time trial around Andermatt with no major climbs — a closing test for the GC leader and a final time-bonus opportunity for any rider still within thirty seconds.

The Field

Pogačar leads UAE Team Emirates-XRG. João Almeida — who is racing the Tour Auvergne this week — is not currently on the Tour de Suisse start list, which the team has confirmed only as their pre-Tour decision becomes clearer after this weekend's mountain stages. Isaac del Toro is similarly not at the Suisse; the team has him in a recovery week.

Primož Roglič leads Red Bull-BORA-Hansgrohe in what is now an established rivalry. Roglič has won the Tour de Suisse twice (2019, 2020) and his form returning from his late-spring crash will define how many riders the race actually has at the front.

Mattias Skjelmose — fresh off today's Stage 2 win at the Tour Auvergne — heads Lidl-Trek alongside Tao Geoghegan Hart. Skjelmose has now publicly framed the Suisse as his GC objective for the spring. A double podium across both the Auvergne and the Suisse would be a significant mid-career line for him.

Egan Bernal leads Ineos-Grenadiers in what the team's manager has framed as a "preparation race." Bernal has not won a major race since his 2019 Tour de France, but his climbing form in early May Catalunya suggested the recovery from his 2022 crash is moving into a different phase.

Other names to watch: Marc Hirschi (UAE), riding for Pogačar with the freedom to win stages; Tom Pidcock (Q36.5-Pro), back to road racing after a spring focused on MTB; Mikel Landa (Soudal Quick-Step), a wildcard who has been a podium threat in mountain stage races for a decade; Felix Gall (Decathlon AG2R), the most consistent climber on the home roads of his career.

The Tour de Suisse 2026 is not the Tour de France's most predictive form race — that is the Dauphiné/Tour Auvergne. But it is one of the most reliable form indicators for the riders who use it. A rider who arrives at Andermatt with a podium and good climbing legs is a rider who arrives in Lille three weeks later in form. A rider who cracks on the Furka or the Oberalp will spend the next two weeks scrambling to repair what he is missing.

For Pogačar specifically: the Suisse is the last time he will test himself against a full WorldTour field before July. Everything he wants to know about his fitness — climbing recovery, time-trial pace, ability to manage a multi-day load — gets answered this week.

The race begins Saturday in Frauenfeld.

For the cycling destination guide to the Swiss Alps the race rides through, see our Swiss Alps and Andermatt cycling guide. For today's Tour Auvergne Stage 2 coverage from La Mure, see our Stage 2 field report.