Tadej Pogacar won his fifth Tour de France on Sunday, 26 July 2026, joining the most exclusive club in cycling. Only four men had previously won five: Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Induráin — the giants of the sport's history. Now a 27-year-old from Slovenia stands beside them.

His UAE Team Emirates XRG squad dominated the race from start to finish. Pogacar won five stages, set record climbing times on both the Col du Tourmalet and Alpe d'Huez, and finished the three-week race almost six and a half minutes clear of his closest rival, Remco Evenepoel (The Guardian). The Tour ran from 4 to 26 July, starting in Barcelona and ending, as always, on the Champs-Élysées in Paris.

The GC — the general classification, or overall standings — was never seriously in doubt. Pogacar had already won the Tour in 2020, 2021, 2024 and 2025. This time, even the mountains barely slowed him. On Alpe d'Huez, the iconic 21-bend climb that has broken generations of riders, he ascended in 35 minutes 27 seconds — more than a minute faster than Marco Pantani's record, which had stood for nearly three decades (Reuters). By the end of that stage, the Guardian reported, he had amassed 26 career Tour stage wins since his debut in 2020.

Evenepoel, the Olympic road race champion riding for Red Bull–Bora–Hansgrohe, took second overall at 6 minutes 26 seconds back. The Belgian salvaged pride with two stage wins of his own — stage 15, where he outsprinted Pogacar to the line, and the stage 16 individual time trial (Reuters). Isaac del Toro, Pogacar's young protégé at UAE, finished third overall and won the best young rider's white jersey. On stage two, Pogacar let the 22-year-old cross the line ahead of him.

Jonas Vingegaard, the two-time champion who had been Pogacar's great rival, crashed out on stage 15 and abandoned the race (Reuters). Florian Lipowitz also crashed out. Their exits stripped the race of two genuine contenders but did little to change the trajectory — Pogacar was already in command.

Mathieu van der Poel won the final stage on the Champs-Élysées in 1 hour 58 minutes 49 seconds, a fitting sprint finish to a race otherwise defined by one rider. Mads Pedersen of Lidl-Trek took the green points jersey with 559 points; Richard Carapaz of EF Education–EasyPost won the polka-dot mountains classification and the overall combativity award.

This Tour was staged against a backdrop of heatwaves and wildfires across southern Europe. Riders climbed through furnace-like conditions, and the race's medical team dealt with repeated cases of heat exhaustion. Pogacar appeared untroubled by any of it.

Eddy Merckx, the man whose record Pogacar has now equalled, told the Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad that he expects the Slovenian to go further. "He will soon break our record for Tour victories," Merckx said (IDL Pro Cycling). At 27, Pogacar has time on his side — and, on this evidence, everything else too.