Tour de France 2026 Stage 2: El Torito Wins on Montjuïc

SUNDAY, 5 JULY 2026 — STAGE 2: TARRAGONA > BARCELONA (168.5KM)

UAE Emirates-XRG seals a first one-two in Tour history as Tadej Pogačar eases up to gift Isaac del Toro the stage atop the Côte du château de Montjuïc, while Jonas Vingegaard survives a demanding circuit to keep the Maillot Jaune.

STAGE REPORT

Side by side, Isaac del Toro and Tadej Pogačar ruled the final uphill in Montjuïc to seal a dominant one-two finish at the end of stage two of the 2026 Tour de France. Their UAE Emirates-XRG teammates had controlled the second half of the day, from the start in Tarragona to a demanding closing circuit in Barcelona, before Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek) attacked inside the final two kilometres — only for the Mexican youngster to fly past him, his Slovenian leader glued to his wheel. Pogačar looked back just long enough to keep tabs on Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe), third on the day, and Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike), who retained the Maillot Jaune in fourth. Del Toro becomes only the second Mexican stage winner in Tour history, after Raúl Alcalá’s two victories in 1989 and 1990, and it is the first time UAE Emirates-XRG has claimed the top two places on a single stage.

The action had got going spectacularly on Saturday, and more fireworks were always likely in Montjuïc, once again at the centre of the final battle on stage two. After the opening team time trial that smiled on Vingegaard, the peloton faced a 168.5-kilometre, explosive stage starting in Tarragona — now the southernmost stage town in Tour history. The route packed 2,500 metres of elevation mostly into its second half, and especially into the closing 12.2-kilometre circuit, where the riders tackled three ascents of the Côte du château de Montjuïc, 1.6 kilometres at 9.3%, cresting the summit for the final time with 2.5 kilometres still to race.

First Attacks

Baptiste Veistroffer (Lotto Intermarché) went clear as the Tour’s first attacker the moment the flag dropped, though he was far from the only rider willing to chance the break. After a series of attacks and counter-attacks, Felix Engelhardt (Jayco AlUla) made the decisive move at kilometre four, immediately followed by Frank van den Broek (Picnic PostNL); Alex Molenaar (Caja Rural-Seguros RGA) bridged across a couple of kilometres later to complete a three-man breakaway.

Veistroffer tried to join them too, but abandoned the chase after some 15 kilometres. As he was reeled back into the bunch, the gap reached its high-water mark for the day, 3’55” at kilometre 27, before Tom Pidcock’s Pinarello-Q36.5 squad took up control at the front to manage it.

First KOM Points

Trailing by just 1’12” on the road, Molenaar found himself the virtual race leader, and he backed it up by winning the intermediate sprint in Viladecans at kilometre 85.6 — a sprint for minor placings behind him won by Biniam Girmay (NSN), who got the better of Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) and Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Premier Tech). But the Dutchman’s eyes were mostly on the polka-dot jersey, and he duly claimed the Tour’s first categorised summit, at Begues, kilometre 94.2, a category-two climb.

UAE Emirates-XRG upped the pace behind. After the summit, only Molenaar and Engelhardt remained clear, their lead cut to 20 seconds before briefly recovering to 45; both were caught with 32 kilometres to go, just before the finishing circuit. Paul Seixas (Decathlon CMA CGM), meanwhile, was left to chase back on after a mechanical.

First Head-to-Head Battles

Brandon McNulty (UAE Emirates-XRG) set a brutal pace to whittle the peloton down to some 30 riders entering the final two laps, driving the bunch all the way to the foot of the day’s last ascent. Tiesj Benoot (Decathlon CMA CGM) and Adam Yates (UAE Emirates-XRG) raised the tempo further still, but the main contenders stayed together to the summit despite late digs from Tobias Halland Johannessen (Uno-X Mobility) and Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost). Mattias Skjelmose tried his own luck on the downhill inside the final two kilometres.

Isaac del Toro let the Dane go, watched him carefully, and then flew past him as the road kicked up for the final 700 metres. In his wake, Pogačar kept the rest of the field honest before celebrating alongside his young teammate. “It means everything to me. I’m very privileged,” del Toro said, still processing the biggest win of his career. “You can’t believe how much we work to get here and I have full confidence in the team. It’s the work of everybody, also my family, my friends when I grew up. I cannot believe what I just did, it’s insane. To be part of Tadej’s team, the best team in the world, already gives me lots of emotions, and it’s unbelievable how I’m feeling right now. It’s just insane, also for my country.” He talked through the finale in more tactical terms too. “We were going super fast. We predicted this situation could happen,” he explained. “At the top of the climb, I was not able to be in the top positions. Then we made a plan for Tadej, chasing Skjelmose, but at the end I just went with the flow.” For a rider still only 22, the scale of the moment was not lost on him. “This kind of opportunity almost never comes and I’m super happy to have managed it,” he said. “To be at this level in France, in the hardest race, it’s a dream.”

Remco Evenepoel finished third, ahead of Jonas Vingegaard, who retained the Maillot Jaune with a lead of six seconds over Pogačar. “I am very satisfied, to be honest,” Vingegaard said. “As I said yesterday, I want to enjoy every single day I spend in the Yellow Jersey. This kind of circuit is not my favourite terrain. I think I can be happy I am staying in the Yellow Jersey, and able to enjoy tomorrow’s stage in yellow as well.” He was watching the strength of the team in white and red closely. “UAE has a very strong duo,” he said. “It will be interesting to see how they will play things out in the race. It’s for sure something we have to keep in mind. So far, so good. I can’t complain. I’m in the Yellow Jersey and happy with how the GC looks for now.”

Behind the head of the race, Engelhardt’s day in the breakaway earned him warm applause of his own, riding, as he was, in the colours of the German national champion. “To get to the Tour has been a lifetime goal of mine, and making it in the German national champion kit makes the opportunity even more special. Managing to get on the podium on my first day here is spectacular,” he said. “We had the spontaneous idea of going for the KOM jersey, but in the end Alex [Molenaar] was just better. Getting a little something out of the day is still nice. The fans today were absolutely crazy in Tarragona, and especially here in Barcelona. It was just something else.” Molenaar, for his part, savoured a day that carried extra weight so close to home. “It’s the perfect start. My family and friends are from Barcelona, so it’s especially amazing to stand on the podium here,” he said. “We hadn’t originally planned for me to be in today’s breakaway, but race circumstances brought me to the head of the race. We wanted to fight for the Mountains jersey, so I chased it. Now I’m going to try and defend it for as long as possible. It is a pleasure and a dream to race the Tour de France.” In doing so, Molenaar became the first Dutch rider to wear the polka-dot jersey since Wout Poels five years earlier, and delivered Caja Rural-Seguros RGA its first-ever distinctive jersey at the Tour de France — a feat the team could not manage across its three appearances between 1987 and 1989.

Numbers from Montjuïc

Mexico had been waiting 36 years for a moment like this. Isaac del Toro’s victory ends a long national drought and makes him, at 22 years, 7 months and 8 days old, the youngest Tour stage winner since Spain’s Carlos Rodríguez triumphed in Morzine in 2023 at 22 years, 5 months and 13 days — the Mexican following in the wheeltracks of his compatriot Raúl Alcalá, winner of the individual time trial in Épinal back in 1990. It is also UAE Emirates-XRG’s 40th Tour stage victory since the team’s creation, a run stretching back to 1999, when Ludo Dierckxsens, then riding for Lampre-Daikin-Colnago, won stage 11 into Saint-Étienne. Sunday’s result gave the team its first one-two finish in Tour history — a feat not seen at all since the opening stage of the 2024 race, when DSM-Firmenich-PostNL’s Romain Bardet and Frank van den Broek outfoxed the bunch — and it lifted Pogačar onto a Tour stage podium for the 41st time in his career, moving him past Charles Pélissier and François Faber and leaving the two-time world champion, with 21 wins, 12 seconds and 8 thirds to his name, just one podium shy of the sport’s all-time top ten.

Vingegaard and Pogačar, meanwhile, simply will not let go of one another: for the 52nd time, the pair occupy the top two places on the general classification, and never before this early in a Tour — the previous instance came only as far back as stage six of the 2023 race, and since stage 17 of the 2021 edition the two men have surrendered the top two spots to their rivals on just 39 occasions. Tarragona, too, earned its own footnote. At 41°07’N, the Catalan city becomes the southernmost stage host in Tour history, edging out Porto-Vecchio, Corsica, at 41°35’N, which hosted the Grand Départ of the centenary 2013 edition — the year the race pushed as far south as Bonifacio, at 41°23’N, on the tip of the Île de Beauté.

Stage 3 Notice: Route Adjusted After Pyrénées-Orientales Wildfires

A joint statement from the Prefect of the Pyrénées-Orientales and the Director of the Tour de France, issued ahead of Monday’s stage, adjusts the conditions for racing on French soil.

An exceptionally large wildfire raging in the Pyrénées-Orientales has required the mass mobilisation of firefighting resources, internal security forces and government agencies, with the protection of people, property and natural areas — and bringing the fire under control — the top priority. In light of the situation, Pierre Regnault de la Mothe, Prefect of the Pyrénées-Orientales, and Christian Prudhomme, Director of the Tour de France, have decided to adjust the conditions for the French portion of stage three, which runs from Granollers to Les Angles on Monday, 6 July 2026. The measures are intended to limit the mobilisation of public resources to what is strictly necessary, so that personnel can be prioritised for rescue and firefighting operations.

Within France, it has consequently been decided that, at this stage:

• the publicity caravan will not travel the race route;
• the event will be limited to the passage of only the riders and vehicles essential to organising the race;
• the public is asked not to gather along the route or at the finish line.

The Tour de France will therefore run in an exceptional format on French soil, based on autonomous organisation and a significantly scaled-back operation, consistent with the constraints imposed by the situation. Organisers stress that this plan reflects the current situation only, and that further adjustments may follow as circumstances remain highly changeable. The Prefect and the Tour Director saluted everyone involved in fighting the fire — firefighters, internal security forces, government agency staff, local authorities and accredited civil protection associations — for their tireless work, and expressed full solidarity with the communities affected, thanking both residents and visitors for their understanding and civic-mindedness in the face of these exceptional measures.