UAE Tour

The UAE Tour is a men's WorldTour cycling stage race held each February in the United Arab Emirates. Established in 2019, it replaced the Abu Dhabi Tour and Dubai Tour, consolidating the region's racing into a single week-long event that draws top teams looking for warm-weather competition.

The UAE Tour is a WorldTour stage race across the United Arab Emirates, created in 2019 by merging the Abu Dhabi Tour and the Dubai Tour. Sprinters and crosswinds decide most of its flat desert stages, and the red leader’s jersey is usually settled on Jebel Hafeet, the mountain outside Al Ain.

How the Abu Dhabi and Dubai tours became the UAE Tour

The Dubai Tour belonged to the sprinters and was won in 2018 by Elia Viviani, and the Abu Dhabi Tour suited the climbers and went that year to Alejandro Valverde. The merged race kept both sides: its first edition had seven stages, with a team time trial, three sprint stages and three in the mountains.

Jumbo-Visma won that opening team time trial over 16 kilometers in Abu Dhabi, and Primož Roglič took the first red jersey. He wore it to the end of the week. Valverde beat him in the sprint at the top of Jebel Hafeet, Roglič won on Jebel Jais three days later ahead of Tom Dumoulin, and he finished 31 seconds ahead of Valverde overall.

Jebel Hafeet, the climb that decides the UAE Tour

Jebel Hafeet came from the Abu Dhabi Tour, where the peloton first raced up it in 2015. The climb is about 10 kilometers long, on a three-lane road of wide hairpins, with gradients mostly of 8 to 9 percent and a steepest part of 11 percent three kilometers from the top. The road dips briefly inside the last kilometer before the final ramp, so a rider who has not dropped the others by then still has to win a sprint. Every edition from 2019 to 2026 finished a stage there, and the 2020 race did so twice.

Jebel Jais, the country’s highest peak, was the other summit finish in 2019, 2022 and 2025, a steadier climb that measured 19 kilometers at 5.6 percent in 2025. In 2026 the race went to Jebel Mobrah for the first time: about 15 kilometers, the last six at an average of 12 percent, where Antonio Tiberi won and took the lead.

Crosswinds and sprinters on the desert stages

The flat stages cross open desert, and when the wind blows from the side the overall race can be decided long before the mountains. On the first day in 2021 the peloton split, and Mathieu van der Poel won the sprint from a front group of 23 riders. Tadej Pogačar, Adam Yates and João Almeida were in it, and most of their rivals finished eight and a half minutes behind.

The opening stage split again in 2023, when Remco Evenepoel was in the front group of 13 and gained 51 seconds on most of the other contenders. Yates, by then riding for UAE Team Emirates, missed the move. He won the last stage on Jebel Hafeet, but Evenepoel finished second there and took the race by 59 seconds from Luke Plapp.

On calmer days the same roads belong to the sprinters, and the race is billed as their unofficial world championships. In 2026 Jonathan Milan won three stages, the last at 50.566 kilometers per hour, the fastest stage of the race’s first eight editions.

Adam Yates and the 2020 UAE Tour stopped by the pandemic

Yates won the 2020 race on its third stage. He attacked six kilometers from the top of Jebel Hafeet, dropped Alexey Lutsenko and David Gaudu a kilometer later and finished 1 minute 3 seconds ahead of Pogačar. No winner on the climb had ever had more than 17 seconds in hand.

Two days later the race climbed the same mountain again. Pogačar attacked several times, Yates answered each move, and Pogačar won the stage with a bike throw after Lutsenko had raised an arm too early. Yates led by 1 minute 1 second with two flat stages left. They were never raced: that evening two Italian staff members of one team tested positive for the coronavirus, the last two stages were canceled, and riders, staff and journalists were kept in the race hotel in Abu Dhabi to be tested. The standings after five stages became the result.

Pogačar’s three UAE Tour wins for the home team

UAE Team Emirates treats it as a home race. “It’s the first race of the season but for us it’s one of the most important races,” Pogačar said after his 2022 win.

He won in 2021 and 2022, both times with Yates second and both times after beating him in the sprint at the top of Jebel Hafeet. The margins were 35 and 22 seconds. His third win, in 2025, was wider: he won on Jebel Jais, then rode the last 7.6 kilometers of Jebel Hafeet alone and finished 1 minute 14 seconds ahead of Giulio Ciccone.

Van Eetvelt’s two-second win in 2024

The smallest winning margin in the first eight editions was two seconds, in 2024. Jay Vine of UAE Team Emirates started the final stage in the red jersey and was dropped with seven kilometers of Jebel Hafeet still to climb, which left Ben O’Connor as leader on the road. When Michael Storer accelerated two kilometers from the top, Lennert Van Eetvelt followed with Ilan Van Wilder and went clear alone 300 meters later.

He won the stage by 22 seconds, and with the winner’s time bonus that gave him the race by two seconds from O’Connor. Van Eetvelt was 22 and had turned professional the year before. He sprinted through the line before he celebrated.

Isaac del Toro and the Jebel Hafeet record in 2026

Pogačar did not ride in 2026, and UAE Team Emirates gave the leadership to Isaac del Toro, a 22-year-old Mexican. Tiberi carried a 21-second lead over him to Jebel Hafeet on the sixth stage. Del Toro attacked 4.2 kilometers from the top, when only Tiberi could follow, and again with 2.7 kilometers left, this time alone.

He climbed the mountain in 25 minutes 15 seconds and took the record from Yates, who had held it at 25:53 and helped pace him that day as a teammate. The next day he finished in the bunch in Abu Dhabi and won the race by 20 seconds from Tiberi, his first overall win in a WorldTour stage race.

February in the Gulf usually means sunshine and racing that splits into distinct acts. The flat stages favor sprinters on wide, exposed roads where crosswinds can fracture the peloton. The summit finishes, Jebel Hafeet above Al Ain and usually a second climb in Ras Al Khaimah, decide the overall classification. It's a race that rewards both speed and climbing form, often serving as a proving ground for riders testing their condition ahead of the European spring.