Liège-Bastogne-Liège Femmes

Liège-Bastogne-Liège Femmes, a one-day bike race and the women's edition of the oldest Monument, closes the Ardennes classics each April in Belgium. First run in 2017, it tests endurance and tactical sharpness across a route defined by repeated short climbs and accumulating fatigue rather than a single defining ascent.

Liège-Bastogne-Liège Femmes, first raced in 2017, goes one way: from Bastogne north through the Belgian Ardennes to Liège. It shares its last climbs, the Côte de la Redoute and the Côte de la Roche-aux-Faucons, with the men’s race. Demi Vollering holds the record with three wins.

Van der Breggen wins the first two editions in Ans

The first race started in Bastogne with 139 riders and covered 134 kilometers. Its finale was the men’s: La Redoute, the Roche-aux-Faucons, the Côte de Saint-Nicolas and the uphill finish in Ans.

An attack by Kasia Niewiadoma drew out a group of five in which Boels-Dolmans was the only team with two riders, Anna van der Breggen and Lizzie Deignan. Van der Breggen rode the last seven kilometers alone and won by 17 seconds from Deignan, with Niewiadoma third. “Because Lizzie is there, people are more hesitant to react to my attack,” she said. She had won the Amstel Gold Race and the Flèche Wallonne earlier that week, and she finished alone all three times.

In 2018 Amanda Spratt attacked with 18 kilometers to go and still led by 55 seconds with 10 left. Van der Breggen dropped the other chasers on the Saint-Nicolas, caught Spratt five kilometers from the line and left her on the rise to the finish. Almost none of it was shown live: only the last 200 meters were cut into the men’s broadcast.

The 2019 move to central Liège and Van Vleuten’s solo

In 2019 the women’s finish moved with the men’s from Ans to a flat finish in the center of Liège, and the Roche-aux-Faucons became the last classified climb. Annemiek van Vleuten attacked on La Redoute with 32 kilometers to go and won by 1 minute 39 seconds from Floortje Mackaij. Third was Vollering, then riding for Parkhotel Valkenburg. That race was not broadcast live anywhere, and from 2020 at least 45 minutes of live coverage became mandatory for Women’s WorldTour races.

Deignan holds off Brown in 2020

The 2020 race was postponed by the pandemic and run on October 4. Deignan was in a group of nine that went clear with more than 50 kilometers to go, and she left the others on La Redoute, 30 kilometers from the finish.

Grace Brown attacked from the chasers on the Roche-aux-Faucons, was 32 seconds behind at the top and had Deignan in sight several times on the twisting run into Liège. “I knew that she would descend faster than me, so I was just praying the line would come quicker,” Deignan said. She won by nine seconds, and her Trek-Segafredo teammate Ellen van Dijk was third.

Vollering’s first win and the Ardennes treble

Vollering won for the first time in 2021, in a sprint of five ahead of Van Vleuten and Elisa Longo Borghini. Van der Breggen, by then her teammate at SD Worx, set the pace on the Roche-aux-Faucons and led the group down into Liège. “This is a race I really like, two years ago I was third here in my first pro year, and now already I won,” Vollering said.

In 2022 Van Vleuten, 39 years old, attacked twice, on La Redoute and again on the Roche-aux-Faucons, and won alone by 43 seconds. “It’s like with good wine, the strength also comes with age,” she said. Brown was second, as she had been in 2020.

The 2023 route included the Côte de Stockeu for the first time. Vollering’s teammate Marlen Reusser went clear in a group there with 77 kilometers to go, dropped her companions on La Redoute and reached the foot of the Roche-aux-Faucons 40 seconds ahead. She was caught on that climb, and Vollering and Longo Borghini rode away from the others on the next rise, toward Boncelles. Vollering won the two-rider sprint, and Reusser was third. Vollering had already won Amstel and Flèche that week, the same three wins as Van der Breggen in 2017, and Van der Breggen was now her sports director.

A breakaway win for Brown in 2024, a sprint of four in 2025

Brown won in 2024 after spending half the race in a breakaway. She was one of the three strongest of that group on La Redoute, and the favorites only joined them after the Roche-aux-Faucons. She said that “once I survived Roche-aux-Faucons, I thought ‘it’s on'”. She almost crashed in a roundabout 6.8 kilometers from the finish, got back to the group, and in a sprint of six came from behind to pass Longo Borghini in the last meters.

In 2025 Puck Pieterse attacked on the Roche-aux-Faucons, and Cédrine Kerbaol went alone with 12 kilometers to go. Pieterse, Vollering and Kimberley Le Court Pienaar caught her three kilometers later. Le Court Pienaar, from Mauritius, won the sprint of four on the Quai des Ardennes, ahead of Pieterse and Vollering.

Vollering’s record third win in 2026

The tenth edition, in 2026, was 156 kilometers long, 22 more than the first, and climbed the Col de Haussire for the first time. Vollering attacked on La Redoute about 600 meters from the top and rode the remaining 34 kilometers alone. She finished almost a minute and a half ahead of Pieterse and Niewiadoma, with Van der Breggen fourth. “Still being a club rider, I was already dreaming about it without knowing if there would ever be a women’s race,” she said at the finish.

Her first two wins had come in sprints from small groups. The third made her the first three-time winner; Van der Breggen and Van Vleuten have two wins each.

This race carries the weight of Monument prestige and the pressure of being the final word on the spring classics season. It favors climbers who can manage fatigue across a long day rather than those who rely on one explosive moment. The winner often emerges from a late selection formed in the final 20 kilometers, often settling questions left open by Amstel and Flèche. Demi Vollering, Annemiek van Vleuten, and Grace Brown have all claimed the title, and the race consistently produces a clear hierarchy among the best Ardennes specialists.