Pogacar conquers the Tourmalet to win stage 6 and retake the Tour de France lead

Tadej Pogacar turned the first high-mountain stage of the 2026 Tour de France into a statement of authority, riding clear of his great rival Jonas Vingegaard on the Col du Tourmalet and holding on to win stage six at Gavarnie-Gedre. It was the 23rd Tour stage victory of the world champion's career, and it returned the yellow jersey to his shoulders.

The decisive move came with five kilometres left on the hors-categorie Tourmalet, where his UAE Team Emirates-XRG teammate Isaac del Toro lifted the pace before Pogacar surged clear alone. Vingegaard crested the summit around half a minute down, but the gap only grew across the long descent and the final climb to Gavarnie-Gedre, an 18.7km rise averaging a modest 3.7% that Pogacar treated as a launchpad rather than a place to defend.

By the finish the Slovenian had put 2 minutes and 38 seconds into Vingegaard, with del Toro completing a perfect day for the Emirati team in third at 2:57. Remco Evenepoel limited his losses in fourth, the 19-year-old Paul Seixas impressed in fifth, and Egan Bernal took sixth.

The overnight leader Torstein Traeen, who had held a buffer of almost eight minutes, was swept up by the pace on a crash-hit afternoon and slid out of the race lead, handing yellow back to Pogacar. The result leaves the two-time defending champion in command of the general classification with the Pyrenees only just begun, and the peloton already weighing how much of the race may have been settled in a single afternoon.

Attrition was heavy in the heat: Movistar's Cian Uijtdebroeks, ill since the start, abandoned after a mechanical dropped him, one of several riders whose Tour ended on the Tourmalet's slopes. Stage seven follows on Friday.