PARIS (AFP) – The 2025 Tour de France will be raced exclusively in France for the first time since the 2020 COVID edition with the 21 stages including two time-trials, a blockbuster final week in the Alps and a return to the finale on the Champs-Elysees.
After successive starts outside France, in Copenhagen in 2022, Bilbao in 2023 and Florence in 2024, the 2025 “Grand Depart” is in the northern French city of Lille. “We decided to bring the Tour home, it was high time after all the foreign starts,” race director Christian Prudhomme said.
Entirely absent from the 2024 route due to the Paris Olympics, the 2025 edition has eight stages in the north and west and ends with eight laps along the cobbles of the Champs-Elysees.
The Olympics enjoyed a huge success with a long, arduous road race around Paris but organisers said it was too soon for the Tour to attempt that.
