Ronde van Brugge Women

Ronde van Brugge Women, in English the Tour of Bruges Women, is a one-day Women's WorldTour bike race held in Belgium each March. It continues the women's Classic Brugge-De Panne, first held in 2018, under a new name and with start and finish in Bruges from 2026.

Tour of Bruges Women is a flat one-day Women’s WorldTour race, held in late March on the roads around Bruges. It has had that name since 2026 and continues the women’s Classic Brugge-De Panne, first raced in 2018. Sprinters have won most editions, and two riders have won alone after crosswinds split the field.

The women’s race from Bruges to De Panne

The winners before 2026 did not win a Tour of Bruges. They won a race from Bruges to the coast at De Panne, held eight times, first as the Driedaagse Brugge-De Panne and from 2021 as the Classic Brugge-De Panne. The Tour of Bruges, Ronde van Brugge in Dutch, continues that race.

The race exists because of a date dispute in the men’s calendar. The Three Days of De Panne, a men’s stage race since 1977, lost its week before the Tour of Flanders for 2018 and was cut to a single day. To keep more than one day of racing, the organizers added a women's race the day after the men’s, and it was part of the Women’s WorldTour from its first edition on March 22, 2018.

Jolien D’hoore’s two sprints, 2018 and 2020

The first edition covered 151.7 kilometers in rain and strong wind. A break of 15 went clear on cobbles early in the day, the peloton split into echelons behind it, and Mieke Kröger, the last of the escapees, was caught 700 meters from the line. Jolien D’hoore won the sprint from Chloe Hosking and Christine Majerus without knowing it was for first place. “Even if it was for seventh or eighth place, I wanted to win the sprint,” she said afterward.

Kirsten Wild won a bunch sprint in 2019, on a day with hardly any wind. In 2020, when the pandemic moved the race to October, D’hoore crossed the line first again. The jury relegated her for drifting off her line toward the barriers, and the win went to Lorena Wiebes, who had been coming past on that side.

De Moeren and Grace Brown’s solo win in 2021

In the race’s last years in De Panne the women rode two finishing laps, and each one crossed De Moeren. This is drained marshland on the French border, about two meters below sea level, with a straight concrete road of about four kilometers that is open to the wind.

In 2021 the second crossing left 13 riders in front, and Wiebes was not among them. Grace Brown, outnumbered by sprinters, attacked on a narrow, technical stretch with 10 kilometers to go and finished seven seconds ahead of Emma Norsgaard. It was the fourth edition and the first that did not end in a sprint. It was also Brown’s first WorldTour win, and she said afterward that “on paper this isn’t really a race that suits me”.

Equal prize money in 2022

In 2022 the women raced for the same prize money as the men for the first time. The UCI scale gave the women’s race 7,700 euros against 40,000 for the men’s, and the title sponsor, Bruges, De Panne and the organizers made up the difference. There was no wind in De Moeren that day, and Elisa Balsamo, the world champion, won the sprint from a reduced bunch. She had started as the lead-out for her teammate Hosking, who told her in the last kilometer to sprint for herself.

Pfeiffer Georgi’s solo win in 2023

Pfeiffer Georgi fractured two vertebrae in a crash in the 2020 race. Three years later she and her DSM teammate Megan Jastrab were in the group of 10 that rode clear on the first crossing of De Moeren. On the second crossing the two of them forced the pace until six riders were left, Balsamo and Wiebes among them.

Jastrab attacked first. When she was caught, seven kilometers from the finish, Georgi went and nobody chased. Georgi won by 1 minute 10 seconds, her first WorldTour victory, and Balsamo beat Wiebes for second.

Elisa Balsamo and Lorena Wiebes, two wins each

Balsamo won for the second time in 2024, in a bunch sprint ahead of Charlotte Kool. Wiebes took her second win in 2025, days after winning Milano-Sanremo. Her win, the 99th of her professional career, came in the eighth edition, the last to finish in De Panne. Wiebes was also second in 2019 and 2022 and third in 2023. Balsamo was third in 2025, and she finished on the podium in five straight editions from 2022 to 2026: first, second, first, third and second.

Carys Lloyd wins the first race in Bruges

The 2026 race started on the Markt in Bruges and finished on the Gulden-Vlieslaan, a wide avenue, after 143.7 kilometers on flat loops south and north of the city. The route had the cobbles of the Brieversweg and an exposed stretch along the Damse Vaart canal, and De Moeren was no longer on it.

On March 26 the wind was strong but never split the field for long, and hail fell on the riders in the last 45 kilometers. A crash just over two kilometers from the finish took down Kool and broke up the lead-out trains.

Wiebes, who had not lost a bunch sprint since the summer of 2024, was boxed in on the left and finished ninth. Carys Lloyd of Movistar, 19 years old, started her sprint on the right with 200 meters to go and held off Balsamo for the first win of her professional career, with Nienke Veenhoven third. Lloyd said the sprinters “were just left with no lead-outs, and it was kind of just everyone for themselves”.

The route is built for fast finishers, but it is not a simple drag strip. Flemish roads, crosswinds, and constant accelerations make the race stressful long before the final sprint, so the riders who read the finale best can beat faster names who spend too much too early.