For the first time in history, the women’s edition of the Tour de France will bring its world-class racing to British roads, with organisers pulling back the curtain on the full route details for the event’s opening three stages of the 2027 race.
This historic occasion marks a milestone for global cycling: 2027 will be the first time that both the men’s and women’s Grand Departs (opening stages) of the Tour de France are hosted outside France in the same nation, building on the UK’s long history of welcoming the world’s most prestigious cycling race. The men’s race has previously held its opening stages in Britain four times, most recently in 2014 when an estimated 4.8 million fans lined the roads to cheer on riders.
The three newly revealed stages for the 2027 Tour de France Femmes Avec Swift bring a mix of sprint opportunities, high-altitude drama, and a groundbreaking first for the women’s event. The opening 85.7km stage will kick off in Leeds and finish with a likely sprint finish in Manchester, setting the tone for a race that will push even the most elite riders to their limits. The most anticipated test comes in the second stage: a gruelling 154km route from Manchester to Sheffield that packs nearly 3,000 metres of climbing, including the iconic Winnats Pass in the Peak District. Race organiser ASO calls this leg “one of the hardest Grand Depart stages we’ve ever seen before”, a description echoed by rising British cycling star Cat Ferguson. The third and final opening stage will be an approximately 18km team time trial finishing at London’s Mall, a first for any edition of the women’s Tour de France; full route details for the time trial are set to be announced this coming October.
For Ferguson, a 19-year-old rider with Movistar who was born in the Yorkshire town of Skipton, the opportunity to race on home roads feels like a full-circle moment. As a young child, she watched the 2014 men’s Grand Depart in Yorkshire from the side of local roads, and now she is gearing up to compete in the 2027 edition. “I trained on those roads and I know they’re going to be super brutal stages. Stage two in particular – always up and down. It’s really going to be one [stage] that can change the Tour. The GC [general classification] leaders can lose a lot,” Ferguson explained.
The 2027 event will see the opening three stages of both the men’s and women’s races held across the UK, with the men’s race kicking off on 2 July and the women’s race starting on 30 July. Men’s route details for stages starting in Edinburgh, Keswick and Welshpool were first unveiled back in January 2026. UK government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has billed the combined event as “the most accessible major sporting spectacle ever held in Britain”: organisers estimate the combined Grand Departs will pass within an hour’s drive of 60% of the UK population, with free public access to spectating along more than 900km of public roads.
Tour de France Femmes race director Marion Rousse highlighted the broader significance of the UK hosting the women’s race, saying: “The United Kingdom has already shown its passion for the Tour, and these stages will once again showcase the energy of the crowds, the beauty of the landscapes and the growing importance of women’s cycling on the world stage.” The official route announcement included a focus on growing grassroots participation, with seven young girls joining race leaders and professional riders as part of the JOY programme, an initiative designed to reduce physical inactivity and improve mental wellbeing among girls in the UK.
The 2027 event comes as the UK is poised to reap the benefits of a previous golden age of British cycling sparked by the 2014 Tour Grand Depart. After British riders Bradley Wiggins claimed the 2012 Tour title and Chris Froome won in 2013, the 2014 event cemented the UK’s status as a global cycling powerhouse. Today, that legacy has grown: the UCI World Tour now counts a combined record 49 British male and female riders, with many ranked among the top contenders to win the sport’s biggest events. The combined six stages of the men’s and women’s races in 2027 draw a global audience of over one billion viewing hours across 190 countries, making it an unprecedented moment for UK cycling.
Even with this momentum, the event faces notable challenges. British Cycling, the national governing body for the sport, has seen declining membership numbers in recent years, and only stepped in to rescue the men’s and women’s Tours of Britain from collapse in 2024. Hosting major pro cycling races on closed public roads in the UK is far more expensive than it is on the European continent, driven largely by exorbitant policing costs for high-speed events that require a full race cavalcade of 40 cars and dozens of motorbikes. While no official cost figures have been released, unofficial estimates place the total cost of hosting all six 2027 stages at over £50 million, with the majority of funding coming from central government and local councils.