Monaco becomes the first place in cycling history to have launched all three Grand Tours when the 2026 Vuelta a Espana opens there on August 22 with a 9.4 kilometre time trial through the principality's streets. The principality already started the 1966 Giro d'Italia and the 2009 Tour de France, and the Vuelta's opening stage completes a set no other city or country can claim, sending 184 riders out from the same streets that have hosted Formula 1 for decades.
Among those riders is Tadej Pogacar, the five time Tour de France winner who lives in Monaco and will pass his own front door during the opening time trial. It marks his first appearance at the Vuelta, and he arrives with a chance at something no rider has managed in the same season, winning all three Grand Tours in a single year, a target that makes his home city start feel more symbolic than any of his previous Grand Tour openings.
Monaco's own Victor Langellotti will also be on the start list, racing at home for the first time since joining XDS Astana, giving the principality's small but committed cycling scene a rider of its own to follow through the opening stage. From Monaco, the route runs all the way to Granada, where the race finishes on September 13 in front of the Alhambra, with organisers building in more than 58,000 metres of climbing along the way, enough to make this edition one of the most mountainous Grand Tours ever staged.
The Vuelta's arrival closes a loop that began in 1966, when the Giro d'Italia became the first Grand Tour to start in Monaco, presented before Prince Rainier III with a field of 100 riders. Six decades on, the principality now holds a distinction unmatched anywhere else in the sport, having launched cycling's three biggest stage races from the same stretch of harbourfront that first hosted a Grand Tour peloton in black and white photographs rather than television broadcasts.