Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal

Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal is a WorldTour one-day bike race held each September in Québec. The circuit crosses Mount Royal, the hill in the middle of the city, stacking short climbs lap after lap until only the strongest remain.

The Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal is a WorldTour one-day race on a circuit over Mount Royal, the hill in the middle of the city. First held in 2010, it is raced in September, two days after the Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec.

Camillien-Houde, Polytechnique and Pagnuelo: the Mount Royal circuit

Each lap starts on Avenue du Parc and turns almost at once onto the Côte Camillien-Houde, 1.8 kilometers at 8 percent. The Côte de Polytechnique follows around kilometer 6: 780 meters at 6 percent, with a 200-meter section at 11 percent. Avenue Pagnuelo, about 600 meters at 7 percent, is the last climb, and the finish is an uphill drag back on Avenue du Parc.

In 2025 the lap measured 12.3 kilometers and the riders covered it 17 times: 209.1 kilometers with 4,573 meters of climbing. For 2026 it grew to 13.4 kilometers, with a new passage on Rue Saint-Urbain beside Parc Jeanne-Mance and two 90-degree corners in place of the U-turn before the finishing straight. That race was 16 laps, 214.4 kilometers and 4,304 meters of climbing. The number of laps has changed often: the first edition was 193.6 kilometers long, and the 2022 race had 18 laps and 221.4 kilometers.

Mount Royal before the Grand Prix: Merckx in 1974 and the Olympic road race

In 1974 Montréal hosted the first road world championships held outside Europe. Eddy Merckx won the 262.5-kilometer men’s race in heat of 30 degrees Celsius, beating Raymond Poulidor in a two-man sprint for his third world title, in a year in which he had already won the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France. Only 18 riders finished. “Initially, they said the course was for sprinters, but Mont Royal turned out to be something quite different,” Merckx recalled.

Geneviève Gambillon of France won the women’s title, also in a two-rider sprint, eight days after breaking her collarbone. Two years later the Olympic road race covered 21 laps of a 12.5-kilometer loop on the same hill, and Bernt Johansson of Sweden won the gold medal.

How the Grand Prix came to Montréal in 2010

The Québec and Montréal races began in September 2010, the first time cycling’s top series raced in the Americas. Serge Arsenault, the organization’s president and a former sports journalist, chartered an aircraft to fly the riders, their teams, their equipment and European journalists from Paris to Québec City. The organizers invited Canada’s national team from the first year, and Team Canada was still on the start list in 2026.

Robert Gesink won the first Montréal race, 4 seconds ahead of Peter Sagan and Ryder Hesjedal. Of the 166 starters, 91 finished. Hesjedal was third again in 2013, and those are the only podium places a Canadian has taken in the race.

Gerrans and Matthews win Québec and Montréal in one weekend

Gesink added the Québec race in 2013 and became the first rider to have won both. Simon Gerrans won the two races two days apart in 2014, the first rider to take them in the same year. Only Michael Matthews, in 2018, has done it since. Greg Van Avermaet became Montréal’s first two-time winner, beating Sagan in 2016 and Diego Ulissi in 2019. The race was not held in 2020 or 2021 because of the pandemic.

Pogačar beats Van Aert in 2022

On the last climb of Camillien-Houde in 2022, 11 kilometers from the finish, Tadej Pogačar went clear with Wout van Aert, Andrea Bagioli, Adam Yates and David Gaudu. Gaudu opened the sprint on the rising finishing straight, and Pogačar came past him to win ahead of Van Aert. “I knew that the sprint would be very difficult, especially against a fast opponent like Van Aert,” Pogačar said.

Yates won the next edition, in 2023, by 3 seconds from Pavel Sivakov. In 2024 Pogačar attacked on Camillien-Houde on the penultimate lap and finished alone, 24 seconds ahead of Pello Bilbao.

McNulty and Pogačar finish side by side in 2025

In 2025 Pogačar attacked with four laps left, and his teammate Brandon McNulty was one of three riders who went with him. The two UAE Team Emirates riders were alone for the last two laps and rode up Avenue du Parc side by side, and Pogačar, the world champion, waved McNulty ahead in the final 25 meters. McNulty said afterward that Pogačar “was kind enough to give me the win.” He was the race’s first American winner, and with Quinn Simmons third and Neilson Powless fourth there were three Americans in the first four.

Del Toro, McNulty and the 2026 world championships

In September 2026 the road world championships returned to Montréal, run by the organizers of the two Grands Prix, and the elite road races ended with laps of the same 13.4-kilometer circuit. Two weeks earlier Isaac del Toro had won the Grand Prix on it, attacking Paul Seixas 300 meters from the line after the pair went clear on the last lap. It was the fifth Montréal win in a row for a UAE Team Emirates rider, after Pogačar in 2022 and 2024, Yates in 2023 and McNulty in 2025.

McNulty, third in that Grand Prix, won the world title on September 27. He attacked 32 kilometers from the end of a 273.4-kilometer race that finished with 12 laps of the circuit. He won by 13 seconds from Matthews and Mathieu van der Poel, the first elite men’s road world title for the United States since 1993.

This is one of only two WorldTour races in North America, with the Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec two days earlier, and the urban setting gives it a festival atmosphere that feels distinct from the cobbled classics or mountain stages. The route is deceptively hard: short climbs don't look brutal on paper, but repeated at race speed they become a test of attrition. It sits late in the calendar, so form is unpredictable and riders arrive with different goals, which can produce surprising results.