Tour de France Femmes 2026 stage 3 preview – The race heads into the hills of France and could see a breakaway succeed

Right after the descent, the Côte de Lajoux is the next springboard for a breakaway, followed by 13km of rolling terrain, a descent, another six rolling kilometres, and another descent before the second-category Col de la Savine (5.6km at 5.1%) begins.

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At the top, the riders are almost halfway through the stage, and they have put the hardest terrain behind. A short descent is followed by a gradual 3km climb that doubles as one of the day’s feed zones before a long descent interrupted by two short climbs takes the peloton almost to the intermediate sprint in Champagnole, start town of stage 16 of the men’s Tour de France a few weeks ago as well as stage 7 of the 2024 Tour de France Femmes.

Following the intermediate sprint, the 30km are rolling terrain, all the way to the foot of the fourth-category Côte de Chaux-Champagny. The 1.8km climb has an average gradient of 6.4%, but the bonus sprint in Chilly-sur-Salins only 600 metres after the top of the climb will be even more important to the GC contenders as it offers time bonifications of 6, 4, and 2 seconds for the first three riders across.

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After 4km with a very slight descent, the next 4km are an actual downhill, and the last 15km to the finish line in Poligny are the flattest of the entire day.

SD Worx-Protime brought back the breakaways on stage 2 (Image credit: Getty Images)

This stage is hard to predict. Stage 9 of this year’s Giro d’Italia Women had a similar first-category climb early on and ended up being a GC fight with huge time gaps and small groups – but it was the last stage of a hard race and saw Demi Vollering’s FDJ United-Suez team go all-in on the climb.

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The Col de la Faucille comes after only two days of racing, with an important ITT on the next day and five more stages after that. It is definitely possible to see the peloton reduced to, say, 30 riders at the top, but it is hard to see who should keep the pace going even for the 30km between the Côte de Lajoux and the bottom of the Col de la Savine, much less all the way to the finish.

The Côte de Chaux-Champagny and the bonus sprint immediately after should see action from the GC contenders, for the bonus seconds if nothing else. But keeping a possible small group going for 24km in order to gain a few seconds only to then pay the price on the following day’s ITT will not be a tempting proposition for the GC riders.

Punchy riders with no GC ambitions like Liane Lippert (Movistar) or Puck Pieterse (Fenix-Premier Tech), however, will be interested in staying away, and for EF Education-Oatly’s Magdeleine Vallières and Cédrine Kerbaol or Monica Trinca Colonel of Liv AlUla Jayco, this stage will be a test if they are truly going all-out for stage victories or hold back for a GC result.

However, it is just as likely, if not more so, that things come back together in the final, and a reduced peloton sprints for victory. It could be 30 to 40 riders, with riders like Kim Le Court-Pienaar (AG Insurance-Soudal), Noemi Rüegg (EF Education-Oatly), Célia Gery (FDJ United-Suez), Pfeiffer Georgi (Picnic PostNL), or Thalita de Jong (Human Powered Health) contesting the sprint.

Depending on how the stage was raced, the reduced bunch might be even bigger – and the bigger the group, the more likely it is that double stage winner and yellow jersey Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime), Elisa Balsamo (Lidl-Trek), Marianne Vos (Visma-Lease a Bike), or Shari Bossuyt (AG Insurance) are there as well.

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Profile of the 2026 Tour de France Femmes stage 3

(Image credit: ASO)

Stage 3 map, Tour de France Femmes 2026

(Image credit: ©GEOATLAS)