For ninety years, the Tour de Suisse started in Switzerland. On Wednesday, June 17, 2026, it started in Italy.
The race's Grand Départ is in Sondrio — a medieval market town in the Valtellina, the alpine valley that the Adda river drains east to west through the Lombardy Alps, connecting Lake Como to the Stelvio. The opening stage is 144 kilometres of circuit around the valley's lower slopes, gaining 2,455 metres of elevation, and finishing in Sondrio where it started. This is not a gentle introduction. Route designers borrowed the Il Lombardia language — the punchy, short-but-sharp climbs, the descents that connect them, the nervous peloton reading the shadows of the next ramp before the first one is finished. The race's new era announces itself accordingly.
Why the Format Changed
The Tour de Suisse that opened in Sondrio today is not the eight-stage race that ran from 2022 to 2025. Organisers compressed the race to five stages after years of watching the Critérium du Dauphiné capture the majority of Tour de France contenders as their final preparation race. The arithmetic was clear: an eight-day Tour de Suisse left riders with insufficient time to complete a second altitude training block before the Tour's Grand Départ. Five stages solves the problem. The race gives top GC riders five intensive days of racing, then releases them in time for altitude camp and the Tour.
The format change attracted the field that confirms it worked. Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) is racing the Tour de Suisse for the first time. Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Premier Tech) returns for his first TdS since 2021. Primož Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) and Tom Pidcock (Pinarello-Q36.5) complete a GC top four that would be competitive at any race on the calendar. The women's race, which runs the same five stages on the same days, has Demi Vollering (FDJ-Suez) — fresh off winning the Giro d'Italia Women — alongside Marlen Reusser (Movistar), who defended her Tour de Suisse Women title in 2025, and Elisa Longo Borghini (UAE Team ADQ) and Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon//SRAM).
Stage 1: Three Climbs Over Sondrio's Hinterland
The circuit around Sondrio rolls out of the valley floor and into the foothills on both flanks. The first 90 kilometres ease the field along mainly flat roads, the peloton stretching over the valley-floor roads in the Valtellina's characteristic layout — one lane of asphalt pressed against the mountain's base, the Adda glinting below, the vineyard terraces climbing above. The race happens in the second half.
Buglio in Monte is the day's first real test. A Category 2 climb of approximately three kilometres, it averages 10.2 percent with an opening ramp that touches 17 percent in the steeper early section. The climb sits roughly halfway through the stage's harder second loop, arriving before the riders have had time to recover from the valley approach.
Triangia follows — 4.3 kilometres at 7.3 percent, a longer, more sustained grind that replaces the Buglio's suddenness with persistent uphill pressure. The two climbs together reduce the group and test the diesel of the GC riders. By the time the summit crests, the peloton's shape has changed.
Bordighi closes the day's climbing. One kilometre and one hundred metres — 1.1km at 11.5 percent — arriving in the stage's final kilometres and positioned precisely to split whatever reduced bunch has survived the first two climbs. One short, sharp ramp over which the day's result is settled.
Van der Poel, who can absorb the Buglio and Triangia on raw fitness, faces a different calculation on the Bordighi finale. The world champion from the previous season and the pure climbers have the acceleration advantage on a wall that short. "He will face a battle to live with Pogačar and Tom Pidcock on the punchy terrain in the finales of the first two stages," noted pre-race coverage — a polite way of saying Stage 1 is not written for Alpecin's sprint assets.
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Join ZealZagFollow us on InstagramThe Women's Race: Equal Terrain, Different Favourites
The women's circuit over the same Sondrio roads plays into Vollering's profile more directly than at the Giro, where the altitude stages had taken their toll by the final weekend. The Tour de Suisse's opening climbs — Category 2 and under, no sustained altitude — suit the Dutch climber in the same way that a Liège-Bastogne-Liège stage suits her: repeated short efforts on steep terrain where a combination of power and climbing economy wins.
Reusser's window opens on Stage 4. The 23-kilometre time trial in Aarburg is where the defending champion will look to build or consolidate a lead. Reusser won the TdS Women in 2025 and her time-trial strength is the tool that makes her dangerous in a race that includes a flat ITT before the queen stage in Villars-sur-Ollon.
The Race Ahead
Stage 2 moves to Locarno on Thursday — 157.7 kilometres, 2,093 metres of climbing, with two short climbs in the final 17 kilometres, the last averaging 9.3 percent. Another puncheur's finish, another day before Van der Poel can settle into sprint-adjacent dynamics.
Stage 3 at Bad Ragaz on Friday brings two Category 1 climbs, including the Schwägalp — the race's first genuinely alpine test, where accumulated fatigue from the opening two stages begins to apply pressure to GC standings.
The time trial in Aarburg on Saturday separates any riders who have survived the opening three days at similar times. Then the queen stage: Villars-sur-Ollon on Sunday, 150.7 kilometres, 4,226 metres of climbing, with the Col de la Croix summited three times. This is where the 2026 Tour de Suisse will be decided.
For a guide to cycling the Valtellina roads around Stage 1's Sondrio start — the Stelvio, Mortirolo, and Gavia passes — see our Valtellina cycling destination guide.
