Eleven UCI wins, overall victories at the Itzulia Basque Country and La Flèche Wallonne, and on 11 October a solo ride into Como that made him the youngest winner of Il Lombardia in the Monument’s history. That is the 2026 season Paul Seixas now has to plan around, with a contract at Decathlon-CMA CGM that runs to the end of 2027.
Earlier in the summer the Frenchman finished fourth at the Tour de France on his first attempt, 11:56 behind Tadej Pogačar and, at 19, the youngest rider to start the race since 1937. Together those two results have placed him squarely in the generation now expected to challenge Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard.
A home World Championships in Sallanches
The question now is where to peak in 2027. The UCI Cycling World Championships run from 24 August to 5 September in the Haute-Savoie Mont-Blanc region, with the men’s elite road race on 29 August on a 13.3 km circuit out of Sallanches that climbs the Côte de Domancy, the slope Bernard Hinault used to win the 1980 worlds.
That is personal territory. Seixas’s grandparents live in Haute-Savoie, and he started watching cycling on television beside his grandfather.
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Speaking on RMC’s Super Moscato Show in late October, in an interview carried by Domestique Cycling, Seixas said the rainbow jersey on home roads is the year’s target.
“It’s at my grandparents’ home. I’ve been looking forward to this for years. It’s going to be incredible.”
Five weeks is the whole problem
The calendar is what complicates it. The 2027 Tour de France starts in Edinburgh on 2 July and finishes in Paris on 25 July. The Worlds road race follows thirty-five days later. For a general classification rider trying to recover from three weeks of racing and then arrive sharp for a one-day championship, that gap is rarely enough.
Seixas has admitted the Tour route itself pulls him in the opposite direction.
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“The Tour passes through Haute-Savoie quite a lot, near my grandparents’ house. Honestly, it really makes me want to do it,” he told RMC.
A first start at the Giro d’Italia in May has been floated as the alternative that protects the Worlds as the number-one goal. Decathlon-CMA CGM’s sporting staff have so far left both doors open.
Decision at the December camp
The team is expected to settle Seixas’s 2027 programme at its December training camp, when coaches map out race starts and altitude blocks for the year ahead. Until then the Tour, the Giro and the rainbow jersey in Sallanches all remain on the table.
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