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Who’s coming second? That’s the question being most frequently asked as the peloton convenes for the final Grand Tour of 2026, the Vuelta a España, which rolls away from the start line in Monaco on Saturday.
The unrelenting Tadej Pogacar, making his first appearance in the Spanish race since 2019, is the overwhelming favourite to take the top spot on the podium in Granada on 13 September, with his cowed rivals already seemingly accepting of his supremacy.
The 27-year-old has yet to win the Vuelta but if he does, it will be his seventh Grand Tour win and will see him become the ninth rider to win all three of Europe’s major stage races. It is an elite group to join: Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault, Jacques Anquetil, Alberto Contador, Chris Froome, Felice Gimondi, Jonas Vingegaard and Vincenzo Nibali.
The Slovenian won last month’s Tour de France by almost six and a half minutes and is expected to repeat that level of domination in the season’s final three-week race. He was last beaten in a Grand Tour in 2023 and is hoping to become the first rider to achieve the Tour-Vuelta double since Chris Froome in 2017.
The absence of his old rival Vingegaard, who crashed out of the Tour on the afternoon after his 2am doping test, and the Tour runner-up in Paris, Remco Evenepoel, will further boost Pogacar’s chances.
Vingegaard, still recovering from his collarbone fracture, has thrown in the towel on his 2026 season and his own dominance of this year’s Giro d’Italia, back in May, which fuelled talk of a Pogacar-beating performance in the Tour, already seems a lifetime ago.
The revelation after the Tour ended, that Vingegaard has seemingly given up on challenging Pogacar, has only served to enhance the feeling that the five-time Tour winner is almost unbeatable.
The Danish rider Mattias Skjelmose revealed that Vingegaard has become disheartened by Pogacar’s domination. “Jonas says: ‘I can’t do any more. What am I supposed to do? I produce the best I’ve ever done and he just rides away from me,’” Skjelmose told a Danish podcast.
Pogacar is expected to be further motivated by a lucrative new contract which, it is understood, will see him racing for the UAE Emirates XRG team until 2031 or possibly even 2032. That is exactly the news that Vingegaard, Evenepoel and younger rivals, such as the French teenager Paul Seixas, did not want to hear.
The 27-year-old Slovenian will roll down the hill from his home in Monaco for the Vuelta’s opening weekend in the principality, expecting a coronation. After the opening time trial stage, there is a lengthy trawl through Provence, followed by a transfer across the Pyrenees, via Andorra, to Spain.
Over 3,275km, the peloton will tackle seven summit finishes, face extreme weather, and ride the numerous rough and remote roads that characterise the Spanish race.
Most of the decisive stages will take place in the south of Spain, where the hot conditions that settled on the Tour de France and Tour de France Femmes in July and August are expected to continue.
With the mountain finish to Font Romeu in the Pyrenees coming as early as stage three, Pogacar may soon find himself in the lead. Few among the other podium contenders in the field have ever been able to contain him, except for his compatriot Primoz Roglic.
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The 36-year-old, memorably overhauled by Pogacar on the penultimate stage of the 2020 Tour, has won the Vuelta four times but accepts that a fifth win is unlikely. “Winning it four times is something I could never have imagined. That’s why I don’t want to put any extra pressure on myself,” he said.
For the Netcompany Ineos team, it will be a poignant return to Grand Tour racing, as they come to terms with the loss suffered by Josh Tarling, whose brother Finlay Tarling was killed during last week’s Volta a Portugal. There is expected to be a tribute paid to the Tarling family, although details have yet to be confirmed.
The British team will be led by Scotland’s Oscar Onley, who finished fourth in the 2025 Tour de France, but missed this year’s race through injury. The 23-year-old was in winning form in the recent Tour of Burgos and, after a series of false starts, director of racing, Geraint Thomas, is eager to see Onley racing in the Vuelta.
“This is Oscar’s first Grand Tour riding for us and he is ambitious, excited and wants to get racing,” the 2018 Tour winner said. “He has had some setbacks this season but his win in Burgos showed that he has recovered well and has good legs.”
There are others of course.
Richard Carapaz, winner of two stages in this year’s Tour de France, including a victory on Alpe d’Huez, is perhaps more likely than most to take Pogacar on. The Ecuadorian, who has finished on the podium of both the Tour and the Vuelta in the past, will not let Pogacar’s dominance cramp his style.
But however much his rivals huff and puff, this will be the Pogacar show. He is not immune to misfortune, of course, but he is expected to win at a canter. Anything less will be a major upset for an athlete who exerts a tight grip on his peers and who seems to have become almost infallible.
