The 2027 Tour de France Femmes will decide its winner on one of French cycling’s most mythical climbs. On Saturday 7 August 2027, the race ends with a 170-km stage from Clermont-Ferrand to the summit of the Puy de Dôme, 3,840 meters of climbing on the day, and a final ascent of 11.3 km at 7.8%, with the last four kilometers averaging more than 12%.
Marion Rousse, director of the Tour de France Femmes, said the finale had been built around that single climb in an interview with franceinfo.
“We designed this route so that everything could still be decided on the slopes of the Puy de Dôme.”
The nine-stage route, presented in Paris on Wednesday, covers 1,156 km and 17,665 meters of total elevation gain. There are no rest days.
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Three days in Britain to start
The race starts on Friday 30 July in Leeds, with an 86-km opener to Manchester. Stage 2 runs 154 km the next day from Manchester to Sheffield across the Pennines.
On the Sunday, the peloton heads south to London for an 18-km team time trial, the first in the race’s history. The course threads past Tower Bridge, St Paul’s Cathedral, Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park before finishing on The Mall.
The full route
- Stage 1 (30 Jul): Leeds – Manchester, 86 km
- Stage 2 (31 Jul): Manchester – Sheffield, 154 km
- Stage 3 (1 Aug): London TTT, 18 km
- Stage 4 (2 Aug): Le Touquet-Paris-Plage – Calais, 123 km
- Stage 5 (3 Aug): Neufchâtel-en-Bray – Magnanville, 161 km
- Stage 6 (4 Aug): Orléans – Bourges, 138 km
- Stage 7 (5 Aug): Nevers – La Loge des Gardes, 155 km
- Stage 8 (6 Aug): La Bourboule – Clermont-Ferrand, 151 km
- Stage 9 (7 Aug): Clermont-Ferrand – Puy de Dôme, 170 km
After crossing the Channel, the race opens its French week with a hilly day from Le Touquet-Paris-Plage to Calais and a 161-km run through Normandy from Neufchâtel-en-Bray to Magnanville, a town west of Paris making its Tour debut.
Stages 6 to 8 then tilt the race progressively upward, from a sprinters’ day in Bourges to a first mountain finish at La Loge des Gardes, before Stage 8 packs six categorized climbs and roughly 3,000 meters of climbing into 151 km between La Bourboule and Clermont-Ferrand.
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A climb that returned to the men’s race in 2023
The Puy de Dôme itself is a volcanic cone rising above Clermont-Ferrand, used for decades by the men’s Tour before it fell off the calendar. It returned to the men’s race in 2023, with the final kilometers on a narrow spiral road closed to the public.
Those final kilometers are the point. “It is going to be explosive. Very explosive, in fact,” Rousse told franceinfo.
She framed the choice as a statement for the race itself.
“We really wanted to go after a legendary mountain, one that would help bring women’s cycling a little further into the history of our sport.”
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The 2027 race starts in Leeds on Friday 30 July and finishes on the Puy de Dôme on Saturday 7 August.
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