Tour de Romandie

Tour de Romandie is a WorldTour cycling stage race held each spring in the French-speaking cantons of Switzerland. First run in 1947, it unfolds over six days in late April and early May, typically including a prologue, mountain stages, and in most years an individual time trial.

The Tour de Romandie is a six-day WorldTour stage race through Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland, held in spring in the weeks before the Giro d’Italia. Its winners are usually riders who can climb in the Alps and ride a time trial, and many of them have also won the Tour de France.

How the Tour de Romandie began in 1947

The idea came in 1946, over a fondue shared by Max Girardet, André Jaccard, Fernand Jayet and Paul Denier, four committee members of the Swiss cycling union. They wanted a race for the union’s 50th anniversary, and it was meant to be held once. The first edition was run a year later over the Ascension weekend, with ten invited teams of four riders representing eleven bicycle brands, most of them Swiss. The Belgian Désiré Keteleer won it.

The one-off became an annual race. Ferdi Kübler won the second edition in 1948 and Gino Bartali the third in 1949. Since then only 2020 is missing from the list of winners.

Stephen Roche’s record three wins

Stephen Roche won in 1983, 1984 and 1987, and nobody else has won three times. Kübler, Pascal Richard, Tony Rominger, Cadel Evans and Chris Froome are among the riders who have won twice.

Roche’s third win came in the year he won the Tour de France, and that pairing has been repeated. Evans in 2011, Bradley Wiggins in 2012 and Froome in 2013 each won Romandie in spring and the Tour in July. Eddy Merckx won Romandie in 1968, the year before his first Tour, and Bernard Hinault won it in 1980.

Roglič’s back-to-back wins in 2018 and 2019

Primož Roglič won in 2018 and again in 2019, when he took three of the six stages. He was second in the prologue and won the first road stage from a group of 20 riders that finished almost a minute ahead of the rest. He won again on stage 4 and then took the closing 16.8-kilometer time trial in Geneva, 13 seconds faster than Victor Campenaerts. His final margin was 49 seconds over Rui Costa, with Geraint Thomas third. It was his third stage race win of that season, after the UAE Tour and Tirreno-Adriatico.

Thyon 2000: Thomas’s fall in 2021 and Yates’s solo in 2023

Thyon 2000 is a summit finish at 2,000 meters after a climb of 20.9 kilometers at 7.6 percent. In 2021 the stage there was brought forward two hours to avoid forecast snow, and the descent before the final climb was neutralized because of fog. Thomas attacked with a little over three kilometers left, caught Michael Woods and set the pace for the last two kilometers. In the sprint, inside the final 50 meters, his hand slipped from the bars on the wet road and he fell. Woods won the stage and took the yellow jersey by 11 seconds.

Thomas got it back the next day in the 16-kilometer time trial at Fribourg. Rémi Cavagna won the stage, Thomas was third at 17 seconds, and he won the race by 28 seconds from his teammate Richie Porte.

In 2023 the race leader Juan Ayuso was dropped eight kilometers from the top of the same climb and told his teammate Adam Yates to ride for himself. Yates attacked with four kilometers to go, won alone and took a lead of 19 seconds that he kept to the finish in Geneva.

Final time trials: Vlasov in 2022, Almeida in 2025

The last day has often changed the winner. In 2022 it was an uphill time trial, and Rohan Dennis, twice world time trial champion, started it in the yellow jersey. He had lost the lead by the intermediate check and finished the race eighth, while Aleksandr Vlasov won the stage and his first WorldTour stage race.

In 2025 João Almeida started the 17-kilometer time trial three seconds behind Lenny Martinez. Remco Evenepoel won the stage, Almeida was second, 30 seconds faster than Martinez, and that was enough to win the race.

The climb to Leysin: Rodríguez in 2024 and Pogačar in 2026

The climb to Leysin is 13.9 kilometers long at an average of 6 percent. In 2024 Richard Carapaz won the stage there, Carlos Rodríguez finished third and took the yellow jersey from Ayuso, and the next day Rodríguez won the race by seven seconds from Vlasov and nine from Florian Lipowitz. It was the first stage race win of his career.

Tadej Pogačar rode the race for the first time in 2026 and won four stages. Two were sprints. The third came on the Jaunpass, climbed three times that day, where he dropped Lipowitz a little over a kilometer from the top and descended alone to Charmey to win by 14 seconds. On the last day Lipowitz attacked him on the road to Leysin, and Pogačar followed each move and beat him in the sprint. He won the race by 42 seconds from Lipowitz, with Martinez third at 2 minutes 44 seconds. Twelve weeks later he won his fifth Tour de France.

Romandie sits in the calendar's most revealing window. It arrives late enough that Grand Tour contenders are sharpening form, but early enough that they're still testing limits rather than protecting them. The race moves through terrain that matters: Alpine climbs steep enough to create separation and time trials long enough to expose weakness. It rewards stage-race completeness without demanding three-week durability, and the winner list reflects that standard.