The Tour de France

16 Oct 1900 – ongoing57 items

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The yellow jersey, Tadej Pogačar, and his team on the Col de Peyresourdes, stage 14 of the 2025 Tour de France, 19 July 2025. Photo: Hugo LUC, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The yellow jersey, Tadej Pogačar, and his team on the Col de Peyresourdes, stage 14 of the 2025 Tour de France, 19 July 2025. Photo: Hugo LUC, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Tour de France, 1903 to today

A newspaper stunt that outlived its newspaper. L’Auto sent sixty riders round France in 1903 to sell more copies; the race it invented has run every summer since, except in the two world wars, and often starts in another country. This timeline follows it from the paper’s founding to Tadej Pogačar’s fifth win in 2026.

How it is laid out

  • Four editions are drawn on the map as bands from start to finish: 1903, 1910, 1989 and 2026. Each stage is a straight line from its start town to its finish; a gap is a transfer.

  • Eras and champions are bands too: L’Auto’s Tour, the national teams, the war years, the five-time winners.

  • Results follow the record as the organisers and the UCI keep it today, which lists no winner for 1999 to 2005.

Threads to filter by

  • yellow jersey: who wore it first, and who lost it

  • mountains: the Pyrenees, the Alps and the great climbs

  • rivalries: Anquetil and Poulidor to Pogačar and Vingegaard

  • grand départs: the Tour starting abroad

  • doping: from Simpson to the stripped titles

  • women: the women’s Tours of 1984–89 and since 2022

Henri Desgrange’s front page for the first stage, 1 July 1903, quoted by the Bibliothèque nationale de France:

With the broad and powerful gesture that Zola in La Terre gives his ploughman, L’Auto, a paper of ideas and action, is going to fling across France the unwitting and rugged sowers of energy that are the great professional road riders.

Items

  1. L’Auto-Vélo is founded

  2. L’Auto announces the Tour de France

  3. L’Auto’s Tour

    ≈ 36 years

  4. 1903: the first Tour

    18 days · Montgeron – Lyon – Marseille – Toulouse – Bordeaux – Nantes – Ville-d’Avray (stage towns joined by straight lines)

  5. Sixty riders leave the Réveil-Matin

    Au Réveil-Matin, Montgeron

  6. Garin wins the first stage in Lyon

    Lyon

  7. Garin wins the first Tour

    Parc des Princes velodrome, Paris

  8. The first four of 1904 are disqualified

  9. The first mountain: the Ballon d’Alsace

    Ballon d’Alsace

  10. 1910: into the Pyrenees

    28 days · The fifteen stages of 1910, Paris to Paris (stage towns joined by straight lines)

  11. Tourmalet and Aubisque in one day: “Assassins!”

    Col d’Aubisque

  12. The Galibier

    Col du Galibier

  13. Christophe mends his fork at a forge

    Sainte-Marie-de-Campan

  14. The 1914 Tour starts on the day of Sarajevo

  15. No Tour: the First World War

    ≈ 3 years

  16. The first yellow jersey

    Grenoble

  17. The national-team era

    ≈ 31 years

  18. A prize for the best climber

  19. No Tour: the Second World War

    6 years

  20. Henri Desgrange dies

    Beauvallon, Grimaud, Var

  21. Robic wins on the last day

  22. Bartali wins again, ten years on

  23. The first finish on Alpe d’Huez

    Alpe d’Huez

  24. The green jersey

  25. Amsterdam: the first start abroad

    Amsterdam

  26. Jacques Anquetil’s five Tours

    ≈ 7 years

  27. Trade teams return

  28. Anquetil and Poulidor, elbow to elbow on the Puy de Dôme

    Puy de Dôme

  29. Tom Simpson dies on Mont Ventoux

    Mont Ventoux, below the summit on the Bédoin road

  30. Eddy Merckx’s five Tours

    ≈ 5 years

  31. A punch on the Puy de Dôme

    Puy de Dôme

  32. The first finish on the Champs-Élysées

    Avenue des Champs-Élysées, Paris

  33. Bernard Hinault’s five Tours

    ≈ 7 years

  34. The Tour de France Féminin

    ≈ 5 years

  35. Marianne Martin wins the first women’s Tour

    Avenue des Champs-Élysées, Paris

  36. LeMond and Hinault on Alpe d’Huez

    Alpe d’Huez

  37. 1989: Luxembourg to Paris

    22 days · Luxembourg to Paris, 1989 (stages as straight lines; gaps are transfers)

  38. Fignon takes yellow on Alpe d’Huez

    Alpe d’Huez

  39. LeMond wins by eight seconds

    Avenue des Champs-Élysées, Paris

  40. Miguel Induráin’s five Tours

    4 years

  41. Fabio Casartelli dies on the Portet d’Aspet

    Col de Portet d’Aspet, eastern descent

  42. Festina: a team car stopped at the border

    Neuville-en-Ferrain, on the Belgian border

  43. Seven Tours without a winner

    ≈ 6 years

  44. USADA’s reasoned decision

  45. The UCI strips Armstrong’s seven titles

  46. Bernal’s Tour, and a stage stopped by hail

    Col de l’Iseran

  47. Tadej Pogačar’s five Tours

    6 years

  48. Pogačar overturns Roglič at La Planche des Belles Filles

    La Planche des Belles Filles

  49. Copenhagen’s Grand Départ

    Copenhagen

  50. The Tour de France Femmes begins

    Avenue des Champs-Élysées, Paris

  51. Florence: the first start in Italy

    Florence

  52. Nice: the first finish outside Paris

    Promenade des Anglais, Nice

  53. Niewiadoma wins by four seconds

    Alpe d’Huez

  54. Pogačar’s fourth Tour, via Montmartre

    Butte Montmartre, Paris

  55. 2026: Barcelona to Paris

    22 days · Barcelona to Paris, 2026 (stages as straight lines; gaps are transfers)

  56. Pogačar breaks Vingegaard on the Tourmalet

    Col du Tourmalet

  57. Pogačar’s fifth Tour

    Avenue des Champs-Élysées, Paris