The Tour de France Femmes completed its fifth edition on Sunday after nine stages, 1,175km and a record 18,795 metres of climbing. Its next priority should be showing more of the racing already taking place.
Calls for line-to-line coverage continued through the 2026 edition, when France Télévisions scheduled close to three hours of live coverage each day. That window left the opening kilometres unseen, including the formation of breakaways and the tactical decisions that shaped later racing. Only a couple of stages got line-to-line coverage.
The argument is stronger because the 2026 route rarely offered an easy day. It combined a 21km individual time trial with narrow roads through Beaujolais, Mont Ventoux and four final-stage ascents of the Col d’Èze.
Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney (Canyon//SRAM) attacked around 10km from the summit of Mont Ventoux and took yellow, leaving her 15 seconds ahead of Demi Vollering (FDJ United-Suez) and 39 seconds ahead of Marlen Reusser (Movistar Team) with two stages remaining. Yet the Sisteron-to-Nice stage went live around halfway, after the race-shaping breakaway had formed.
Parity doesn’t mean turning the women’s race into a 21-day replica of the men’s Tour, though. It means letting fans watch the race unfold, from the fight to form the breakaway to the final selection. If the men’s Tour merits line-to-line coverage on 200km-plus transition stages, the women’s race deserves the same treatment.
Access matters as much as broadcast length
France 2 attracted 2.17 million viewers and a 27.6% audience share for the opening stage on August 1. Stage 2 increased that audience to 2.51 million, representing a 28.6% share.
The race is distributed to more than 190 countries, but access varies by market, with different combinations of live coverage, highlights and paywalls.
UK viewers needed TNT Sports through HBO Max for live coverage in 2026, at £30.99 per month. There was no daily free-to-air highlights programme on TV, while the men’s Tour received nightly Channel 5 highlights that averaged 557,400 viewers per stage. Channel 5 is due to show daily women’s highlights in 2027, as well as live coverage of the British opening stages.
The 2027 Grand Départ should give the race another route to growth: three days in Britain, live free-to-air coverage of the opening stages and daily Channel 5 highlights. Leeds to Manchester, Sheffield and a team time trial in London offer a substantial expansion of the race’s UK presence, regardless of whether the overall route grows beyond nine stages.
More stages would bring sporting and financial tests
ASO has yet to confirm whether the race will expand beyond nine stages. A 10th could create more room for route variety without fundamentally changing the event, but moving towards two or three weeks would affect racing styles, increase costs for teams and complicate the wider calendar.
The nine-stage format has encouraged aggressive racing while leaving room for sprinters, time triallists, climbers and breakaway specialists. One additional day would be unlikely to transform that balance. A much longer race, however, could encourage teams to conserve energy and control stages more cautiously, potentially reducing some of the unpredictability that has distinguished the event.
Team finances also differ sharply from those supporting the men’s Tour. Women’s WorldTeams have an average budget of about €5.7 million, compared with €33 million for men’s WorldTeams. Women’s ProTeams average €1.9 million. Extra race days mean further spending on accommodation, travel, recovery staff and equipment, with the burden falling hardest on smaller squads.
Being able to race for three weeks is not, by itself, a reason to make the Tour de France Femmes that long. Complete live coverage, accessible highlights and the 2027 British start offer more immediate ways to expand its audience while preserving the intensity of nine stages.
Photo credits: ASO/ Billy Ceusters/ Gaetan Flamme
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