Tadej Pogačar won his fifth Tour de France on 26 July 2026, tying the all-time record and becoming the youngest rider ever to reach five victories in cycling's most famous race. The 27-year-old Slovenian, riding for UAE Team Emirates-XRG, finished the three-week race with a total winning time of 73 hours, 56 minutes, and 26 seconds, according to the official Tour de France website. His margin of victory over the rest of the field was 6 minutes and 26 seconds — a commanding gap in a sport where races are often decided by seconds, not minutes (Deadline).

Only four other cyclists have won the Tour five times: Eddy Merckx, Miguel Indurain, Bernard Hinault, and Jacques Anquetil. Lance Armstrong won seven but was stripped of all of them in 2012 after a doping investigation. Pogačar now sits alongside that legendary quartet, and at 27, he is the youngest of them all (Deadline).

The 2026 Tour began on 4 July with Stage 1 looping through Barcelona and covered 21 stages across three weeks, including rest days in Cantal on 13 July and Haute-Savoie on 20 July. Pogačar seized the yellow jersey — the garment worn by the overall race leader — during the sixth stage and held it through the final 15 stages all the way to the Champs-Élysées in Paris. Along the way, he collected five individual stage wins, including a victory on Alpe d'Huez, one of cycling's most storied climbs. That win on Alpe d'Huez was the 26th Tour de France stage victory of his career, per the Tour's official site (letour.fr).

His chief rival, Jonas Vingegaard, who had beaten Pogačar to win the Tour in both 2022 and 2023, crashed during Stage 15 and broke his collarbone. But Pogačar was already leading by four and a half minutes before that crash, meaning the race was effectively settled on the road, not by misfortune (Deadline).

Behind Pogačar, the general classification — the overall standings based on cumulative time — saw Paul Seixas of Decathlon CMA CGM Team finish fourth, nearly 12 minutes back. Lenny Martinez of Bahrain Victorious took fifth, Mattias Skjelmose of Lidl-Trek sixth, and Juan Ayuso, also of Lidl-Trek, seventh. Lidl-Trek also won the team classification, which ranks squads by their best three riders' combined times, with a total of 224 hours, 57 minutes, and 43 seconds.

In the other jersey competitions, Mads Pedersen won the points classification, the green jersey awarded to the most consistent sprinter and stage finisher, with 559 points. Richard Carapaz took the mountains classification, the polka dot jersey for the best climber, with 156 points. Isaac Del Toro Romero, who won Stage 2 early in the race, claimed the white jersey as the best young rider. The final stage into Paris, Stage 21 from Thoiry to the Champs-Élysées, was won by Mathieu van der Poel in a time of 1 hour, 58 minutes, and 49 seconds.

In the United States, NBC Sports carried three weeks of live coverage across NBC, Peacock, and NBCSN, giving American audiences full access to every stage (Deadline).

After his record-tying fifth win, Pogačar told TNT Sports he "definitely will not be doing this for too much long time." Whether that means another Tour victory remains an open question. The 2027 race will start in Great Britain, and the 2028 Grand Départ is scheduled for Champagne Grand Est in France.