Tour de France Femmes Gets Under Way

A day before the men's Tour de France heads into Paris on Sunday 27th July, the women's race gets under way in Brittany. The Tour de France Femmes may be a shorter version, but it's still a brutal test of stamina and endurance that will see the best riders in the world go head-to-head in a race across the width of the country. 

The first of the race's nine stages gets under way in Brittany, in north west France, on 26th July. After a further eight stages, and a record 1,165km, the race concludes on 3rd August in the south west of the country in the Haute-Savoie. On the way, the 154 riders from 22 teams will tackle climbs in the Armorican Masif, the Massif Central and the Alps, totalling 17,240 vertical meters - another record. 

The 2025 race, with Zwift as the title sponsor, will be the fourth edition of the event in its current form and has been extended from eight to nine stages. The inaugural 2022 race was the first multistage Tour de France for women for 30 years and came about after concerted pressure from elite women riders for an event of this kind.

The 2024 race was won by Poland’s Kasi Niewiadoma of the Canyon-SRAM team. She triumphed over defending champion Demi Vollering by a scarcely believable margin of just four seconds after 950km of racing. The consensus is that this year’s race will be another extremely tightly contested affair, with Vollering, now riding for FDJSuez, determined to avenge her 2024 defeat.

UK viewers can watch every stage of the 2025 race on TNT Sports/Discovery+ and can also catch up with all the action on the Tour de France YouTube channel.

Check out the highlights from last year’s Tour de France Femmes, including that incredible final stage, below.