Tour of Flanders 2026 | Cyclingnews

The Ronde, as the Tour of Flanders is known in Belgium, began in 1919 and covers 270km across Flanders with more than a dozen categorised climbs and a handful of cobbled sectors.

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De Ronde, the Tour of Flanders, or simply Vlaanderens Mooiste – the Dutch for “Flanders’ Finest” – it doesn’t really matter: however you describe it, for over a century the Tour of Flanders has been the key point of Belgium’s cycling calendar, developing into its biggest annual bike race and a major goal of many of the true greats of the sport.

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Offering a ferociously difficult mixture of cobbles and hills and often held in rough spring weather, Flanders was first held in 1913 and is the second Monument of the season, with its current position in the calendar 15 days after Milan-San Remo and a fortnight before Paris-Roubaix.

Created by Léon van den Haute, co-founder of the sports newspaper Sportwereld, the first race was 330 kilometres long and was won by Belgian Paul Deman, who doubled cycling with work as a carpet maker. The current defending champion is Tadej Pogačar, who soloed away to victory in the 270-kilometre race to win for a second time ahead of Mads Pedersen and Mathieu van der Poel.

Flanders really took off as a race in the 1930s, with crowds of up to half a million lining the route and motorised police needed for the first time in its history to control the fans. The 1930s also saw Romain Gijssels become the first to win two consecutive Rondes. Then, in 1950, its most emblematic climb, the Muur de Geraardsbergen, was included. As the race took on a more recognisable format to modern viewers in the 1960s, by the 1970s, riders like Eddy Merckx, Roger De Vlaeminck and Freddy Maertens regularly made it their target and Flanders’ place in cycling history was more than guaranteed.

Seven riders jointly hold the record of three wins in Flanders, ranging from Belgians Achiel Buysse, Eric Leman, Johan Museeuw, and Tom Boonen, together with Dutch rider Mathieu van der Poel and Swiss racer Fabian Cancellara. In 2005, it joined the ProTour and, since 2011, has formed part of the WorldTour.