ROULEUR
Giro d'Italia
Date: Friday May 8, 2026 - Sunday May 31, 2026
Start:
Nessebar, Bulgaria
Finish: Rome, Italy
Total distance: 3,459.2km
Stages: 21
Riders: 176
Teams: 23
Defending champion: Simon Yates (Visma-Lease a Bike)
Key information:
GIRO D'ITALIA OVERVIEW
The Giro d’Italia, or just the Giro, is a gruelling multi-stage endurance race and is one of the three Grand Tours, along with the Tour de France and Vuelta a España. Staged over three weeks with 21 individual stage races and two rest days, the Giro features the world’s best cyclists battling it out to win the prestigious pink winner’s jersey.
Last year, the Giro started in the Balkan country of Albania for the first time. In 2026, we will have another foreign start in Bulgaria, while the finale will once again take place in Rome, which will host the stage finish for the eighth time. The numbers tell the story of a demanding Giro: 3,459 kilometers and 49,150 meters of elevation gain. The route is balanced, with a 40.2-km time trial, eight flat stages for sprinters, seven medium-mountain stages and five high-mountain stages, for a total of seven summit finishes.
Simon Yates (Team Visma-Lease a Bike) won the 2025 edition with a margin of 3:56 over the second-placed rider, Isaac del Toro (UAE Team Emirates). The British rider took the pink jersey at the last minute on the penultimate stage to Sestrière in a fairytale story that saw Yates finally get redemption after famously cracking on that same mountain a few years before.
GIRO D'ITALIA ROUTE 2026
Map provided by RCS Sports & Events
Giro 2026 will offer several references to the past. Milan will host a stage finish for the ninetieth time, while the start from Gemona del Friuli will recall the 1976 earthquake, fifty years after the dramatic event.
The Montagna Pantani will be located at the Piani di Pezzè, while the Tappa Bartali—entirely in Tuscany—will coincide with the time trial from Viareggio to Massa. The Cima Coppi of this edition will instead be the Passo Giau, which at 2,233 meters represents the highest point of the entire route.
The final week will open with a very short but very demanding stage, entirely on Swiss soil, from Bellinzona to Carì. Two rolling stages will serve as a prelude to the last days in the high mountains. The Dolomite queen stage will take the peloton from Feltre to the Piani di Pezzè, in a return that recalls Marco Pantani’s victory in the 1992 Giro Dilettanti. Along the way, a sequence of historic passes: Duran, Staulanza (with the Coi variant), Giau and Falzarego.
The following day the race will pay tribute to the victims of the 1976 Friuli earthquake, crossing the affected area before the double climb to Piancavallo.
Before all this, there will be the finish on Blockhaus, tackled from its toughest side, that of Roccamorice. The first week will also offer the “walls” stage around Fermo and the Apennine finish at Corno alle Scale, the highest peak of the Bolognese Apennines. More than twenty years have passed since the Giro last visited, when Gilberto Simoni won here in 2004.
During the second week, the individual Viareggio–Massa time trial is scheduled, followed by a series of stages alternating technical finishes and possible sprints. The weekend will bring the peloton to the Aosta Valley, with the return of the climb to Pila, absent for more than thirty years: a short but extremely tough stage, 133 kilometers with more than 4,400 meters of elevation gain. Sunday should instead return to the sprinters, with a likely bunch sprint in Milan.
As expected, it will then be the third and final week to write the overall classification.
Stage one: Nessebar to Burgas - 156km
Stage two: Burgas to Tarnovo - 220km
Stage three: Plovdiv to Sofia - 174km
Stage four: Catanzaro to Cosenza - 144km
Stage five: Praia a Mare to Potenza - 204km
Stage six: Paestum to Napoli - 161km
Stage seven: Formia to Blockhaus - 246km
Stage eight: Chieti to Fermo - 159km
Stage nine: Cervia to Corno alle Scale- 184km
Stage 10: Viareggio to Massa - 40.2km
Stage 11: Porcari to Chiavari - 178km
Stage 12: Imperia to Novi Ligure - 177km
Stage 13: Alessandria to Verbania - 186km
Stage 14: Aosta to Pila - 133km
Stage 15: Voghera to Milano - 136km
Stage 16: Bellinzona to Carì - 113km
Stage 17: Cassano d'Adda to Andalo - 200km
Stage 18: Fai della Paganella to Pieve di Soligo - 167km
Stage 19: Feltre to Alleghe (Piani di Pezzè) - 151km
Stage 20: Gemona del Friuli to Piancavallo - 199km
Stage 21: Rome to Rome - 131km
GIRO D’ITALIA TEAMS 2026
-
Alpecin-Deceuninck
-
Bahrain-Victorious
- Decathlon CMA CGM Team
- EF Education-EasyPost
- Groupama-FDJ United
- Ineos Grenadiers
- Lotto-Intermarché
- NSN Cycling Team
- Lidl-Trek
-
Movistar Team
- Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe
- Soudal Quick-Step
- Team Jayco Alula
-
Team Picnic PostNL
- Team Visma | Lease a Bike
- Tudor Pro Cycling Team
- Uno-X Mobility
- UAE Team Emirates-XRG
- XDS Astana Team
GIRO D’ITALIA HISTORY
The Giro d’Italia will be in its 109th edition in 2026, having started in 1909. Founded by a local, pink coloured newspaper called La Gazzetta dello Sport, today it’s run by RCS Sport, whose parent company RCS Mediagroup also owns the newspaper. Since its inception, the race has become known for being one of the toughest races in the world, and its savage, varied, and beautiful routes have distinguished its prestige even amongst the other Grand Tours.
Such is the Giro’s accolade, overall wins and stage wins are often career defining moments for riders. Throughout the years the Giro has been running, only 22 riders have won the race more than once, and not many can pull off the back-back Giro wins. For many years no one has, with Spaniard Miguel Indurain the last to pull-off the feat in 1992 and 1993. Three riders – Alfredo Binda, Fausto Coppi, and Eddy Merckx – have won the race a record five times.
Mario Cipollini has won the most stages in the Giro with a grand total of 42 wins.
No one has come close to challenging Cipollini’s record, with Eddy Merckx holding second place with 24 stage wins, Francesco Moser with 23, and Alessandro Petacchi and Roger De Vlaeminck both with 22. Throughout the history of the Giro, Merckx holds the title for the rider to have worn the pink jersey the most, donning it on 77 occasions.
Most Giro d’Italia wins:
Five wins - Alfredo Binda, Fausto Coppi, and Eddy Merckx
Three wins - Gino Bartali, Bernard Hinault, Fiorenzo Magni, Felice Gimondi, and Giovanni Brunero
Recent Giro d’Italia winners:
2025 - Simon Yates, Visma-Lease a Bike
2024 - Tadej Pogačar, UAE Team Emirates
2023 - Primož Roglič, Jumbo-Visma
2022 - Jai Hindley, Bora-Hansgrohe
2021 - Egan Bernal, Ineos Grenadiers
2020 - Tao Geoghegan Hart, Ineos Grenadiers
2019 - Richard Carapaz, Movistar Team
2018 - Chris Froome, Team Sky
2017 - Tom Dumoulin, Team Sunweb
2016 - Vincenzo Nibali, Astana
2015 - Alberto Contador, Tinkoff-Saxo
2014 - Nairo Quintana, Movistar Team