As the Tour de France continues its journey across the country, the dust is settling on a spectacular, sun-drenched Grand Départ in Catalonia. With explosive back-to-back stage finishes atop Montjuïc – the imposing castle fortress looming high above Barcelona – northern Spain delivered a vibrant, unforgettable opening act: A brilliant reminder of the unique, intoxicating allure a foreign start can conjure.
It’s a reminder, too, that the clock is already ticking toward Britain’s own turn in the spotlight. Next summer, 13 years after Yorkshire hosted the 2014 Grand Départ, the world’s biggest bike race returns to our shores. The 2027 edition will roll out of Edinburgh before carving its sweeping way down through northern England and Wales, ensuring the eyes of the sporting world are once again fixed firmly on the UK for three monumental days in July.
As the current Tour moves northwards from the Spanish border, through the Pyrenees, then into central France, we break down the vital ingredients that elevate a Grand Départ from a simple starting line into a truly historic spectacle.
1. Attract massive crowds
It’s something no successful Grand Départ can do without: millions of people at the roadside, all ages getting into the spirit of the Tour. Not only do big crowds spur on the riders and leave them with lasting memories, but they provide incredible backdrops for photos and TV coverage, which go down in history. Who can forget that image of the Tour peloton riding up Buttertubs in the Yorkshire Dales?
“I rode the London Olympics in 2012 and in 2014 the Tour started in Yorkshire and it was pretty amazing,” says dsm-firmenich PostNL’s 37-year-old John Degenkolb. “There were so many people there and the cycling hype was real. In some places it was like riding through an arena. It was a tunnel of noise and it was really, really special on the climbs. It was something that money cannot buy.”
1. Crown a fairytale first yellow jersey
Foreign Grand Departs in numbers
1954 – The first Grand Départ outside of France was in Amsterdam
27 – The number of foreign Grand Départs so far
12 – The number held outside of France since 2007
802km – The distance of the Grand Départ farthest from French soil – Copenhagen (distance as the crow flies from the Danish city to the northernmost point of France)
£32.17m – The cost of bringing the men’s and women’s Grand Départs to Britain in 2027
6 – Netherlands, country with the most Grand Départs
2 – Number of times the UK has hosted a Grand Départ so far
3 – Number of cities that have hosted two foreign Grand Départs (Brussels, Liège and Luxembourg City)
Most riders would prefer to gently ease into 21 days of racing, but this is a major global sporting spectacle – fans want fireworks from day one. Stages can end in sprints, or time trials can establish a GC hierarchy from the off, but there has to be some climbing that tests the legs of the yellow jersey contenders and produces captivating racing. Bilbao in 2023 certainly achieved this, as did Florence the year after. Did Lille last year? Not really.
An immediate hierarchy in the battle for yellow, as has happened this year, has the benefit of calming the peloton down. “To have a couple of harder stages and to have the GC in shape early on is definitely much safer,” says Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe‘s Jai Hindley. “The Tour is always chaotic, but the team time trial and a super challenging second stage was a good spectacle for the people watching and helps us riders too.”
Jay Guarnieri, formerly of the world-famous British cycling fan group the Beefeaters, says: “A lumpy circuit is always a good idea, but not too lumpy – something some of the sprinters could manage so that suspense is built over who gets the first yellow.”
(Image credit: Getty Images)
3. Don’t become a lightning rod
The build-up to most Grand Départs is at least partly overshadowed by the threat of a protest or a certain group promising to exploit the spectacle for their own movement. Catalan independence groups called on volunteers to “mobilise” in large numbers in Barcelona to push forward their cause.
Protests are never far away in the Tour, and it’s always a concern for the race – but that risk is acutely felt by the local organising group for the Grand Départ, who are tasked with making sure that the Tour’s visit runs as smoothly as the race does on home soil, without taking away from the ordinary show. There can be no hiccups, no drama – just celebration.
4. Reward a home hero
Yorkshire in 2014 had four Brits, including the defending champion Chris Froome, but it failed to crown a home hero – no Brit won a stage (and Mark Cavendish’s crashing out in Harrogate still stings). Denmark in 2022 had it, when Magnus Cort infiltrated the breakaway on day two, earning the polka-dot jersey, and then mounted his own solo break on day three. “It was pretty insane getting to the first town,” he later said. “The yelling from the crowds, all by myself, with such a big crowd. That was quite special.”
“It’s the Magnus Cort Show,” his EF Education-EasyPost team declared. It was – and he was on the front page of all the national newspapers, fans even coming out in Cort face masks. For two days, he was the King of Denmark. It left a lasting impression on his countrymen.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
5. Bathe us in sunshine
As much as we’d like to say that the weather doesn’t matter, we all know it does. The last thing the Tour’s opening needs is a rain deluge. Think back to when German city Düsseldorf welcomed the Tour in 2017. Aside from Geraint Thomas winning the opening day’s time trial to go into yellow, what else do you remember?
The countless crashes under torrential rain, big names such as Alejandro Valverde breaking bones, and GC riders losing big chunks of time. Ditto Nice in 2020. Riders staged a strike because conditions were so treacherous, and by the end of the day it was easier to count who hadn’t crashed. So, please, weather gods, be kind.
6. Double-up as dream get-away
Most cycling fans don’t just come to watch the Tour – they also want to experience the culture, see the sights and eat the local cuisine. The best Grand Départs are the ones where you can stay a few days before or after the race has passed and have plenty to see and do. Barcelona, Florence and Monaco (way back in 2009) ticked that box brilliantly as will Edinburgh next year.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
7. Serve up first-rate cycling for fans
Why just watch the pros when you could ride the same routes as them? If you’re going to watch a Grand Départ, you’ll probably want to take your bike. Barcelona was great, as it’s surrounded by the pre-Pyrenees and dozens of cols, but Brussels in 2019 or Utrecht in 2015 were a bit too flat and dull for scenery-seeking cyclists. The UK’s routes visit the Lake District and the Welsh hills – scoring top marks in this regard, weather depending!
8. Put on a party
The host city and region has to buy into Tour fever. There have to be music festivals, fan parks, bike expos – who doesn’t want free merch? – affordable, delicious street food, and plentiful welcoming bars to build atmosphere and excitement. A team presentation set against a famous landmark also helps; Edinburgh Castle will host the 2027 presentation – surely setting a new standard.
“It has to be in an iconic start town and somewhere the locals will totally get on board,” fan Guarnieri says. “The most important thing is fostering anticipation.”
“Having events involving people in the industry, such as ex-riders, really helps,” he adds. “Fans just love to feel part of it.”
9. Mobilise the local masses
The Yorkshire Grand Depart gave cycling a huge boost
(Image credit: Getty Images)
To truly elevate a Grand Départ, host regions need to generate the kind of fanatical community buy-in that physically transforms the landscape. The ultimate benchmark for this remains Yorkshire in 2014. Before a pedal had even been turned, Tour race director Christian Prudhomme predicted that roadside passion would define the event, expecting “houses painted yellow and in polka-dots, and everyone so enthused.”
Yorkshire more than lived up to its billing, with 3.5 million people flooding its cities, villages and moorlands to create a wall of noise. The atmosphere was so electric that Mark Cavendish recalled getting goosebumps climbing Holme Moss. Prudhomme later crowned it “the grandest Grand Départ in the history of the Tour.” It also spawned the creation of the Tour de Yorkshire.
If Edinburgh and Wales can tap into that same unbridled, paint-the-town-yellow community spirit next summer, the 2027 Tour will be an undeniable triumph.
10. Go big, not small
The Tour visits plenty of quaint and lesser-known villages and towns on its three-week voyage, but the start must be in a populous city to really kick the race off with a bang. “It’s nice to begin in a big city because the race is able to reach a bigger audience and people who don’t really follow cycling,” says Matteo Trentin, a veteran of nine Tours. “After the Grand Départ we’ll have more fans of cycling. But if you go to a smaller city or a place that doesn’t have a big city nearby then the locals will come, but you won’t have as many fans.”
NSN‘s George Bennett, a veteran of 18 Grand Tours, concurs: “Buy-in from the public is the biggest thing. You saw the buzz in Barcelona and how excited everyone was. Compare that to a Grand Départ in a place where no one really cares about cycling. I remember one time in the Vuelta a España, the team presentation was in a paddock in the middle of nowhere and no one gave a damn. It took until the fourth stage when we got out of the region for locals to get excited.”
There’s another advantage with starting in places like Barcelona. “It’s pretty easy to fly in and out of here and it makes it so much easier logistically,” Trentin adds. “Especially for us riders it means that we don’t have to spend much time driving around before the race begins.” The upshot of that is that the riders are not mentally taxed before the first pedal stroke.
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