La Vuelta Femenina 26 by Carrefour.es : One day to go ...

May 2 ^nd 2026 - 19:15 [GMT + 2]

. La Vuelta Femenina 26 by Carrefour.es will start on Sunday, May 3, with a hilly stage between Marín and Salvaterra de Miño. The uphill finish should suit punchy riders such as Marianne Vos, Lotte Kopecky, or Noemi Rüegg, all of whom will be aiming to wear La Roja.

. Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift winners Pauline Ferrand-Prévot and Kasia Niewiadoma Phinney are the main favourites for the overall victory. They will face strong challengers in Anna van der Breggen or Juliette Berthet (née Labous), both of whom have already achieved excellent results in this race.

. UAE Team ADQ’s power duo formed by Mavi García and Paula Blasi are the main hopes of the Spanish cycling fans, who look forward to a very demanding course that culminates in two summit finishes in Asturias atop Les Praeres and the Alto de l’Angliru.

An intense, wide-open stage in Pontevedra to break the ice

La Vuelta Femenina 26 by Carrefour.es starts this Sunday, May 3, with a 113.9-kilometre stage from Marín, a beautiful coastal town sitting in the Ría de Pontevedra that allows the Atlantic Ocean to reach the Iberian Peninsula, to Salvaterra de Miño, a village just one bridge away from Portugal. The course is intense and hilly throughout the day, and the final kilometre drags uphill at a 4% average, with slopes up to 8% - two factors that combine to make this an open race, and a hard one to call. “We hope that the terrain is challenging enough to create splits so the pure sprinters get dropped,” hints Team Visma | Lease a Bike DS Joppe de Heij. The Dutch team has Marianne Vos, winner of six stages over the last three editions of this event, as its spearhead. “She has had some really difficult weeks after losing her father just before the Tour of Flanders,” regrets De Heij. “Things have settled down now and she has been able to refocus on racing. She just had a good 10-day training block in Mallorca, so she should be ready to perform this week.” Her squad is definitely backing her chances. “If we can make a situation where the pure sprinters struggle and find the company of other teams in this endeavour, we will definitely race for it.” In order to claim this stage victory, and probably La Roja too, Vos will have to rival other versatile, punchy riders like the SD Worx-Protime power duo formed by Lotte Kopecky and Mischa Bredewold, or EF Education-Oatly’s Noemi Rüegg. “This first uphill finish suits me very well, and I think we have a great chance of pulling off the win,” says the Swiss rider.

From Mavi García to Léa Rondel, La Vuelta Femenina by Carrefour.es seeks for a new champion

126 riders across 18 teams will start La Vuelta Femenina 26 by Carrefour.es on Sunday, May 3. 32 riders are making their debut on the Spanish grand tour, the most notable being UAE Team ADQ’s Paula Blasi. Another debutant is the youngest rider in the field, and the only one below 20 years of age, Mayenne Monbana My Pie’s Léa Rondel (19 years and 260 days old). On the other end of the age standings are the only two riders above 40, UAE Team ADQ’s Mavi García (42y, 122d) and AG Insurance-Soudal’s Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio (40y, 145d). No previous overall winner of this race is on the start list, although we find three names who have already stood on the final podium: Riejanne Markus (Lidl-Trek, 2nd in 2024), Anna van der Breggen (Team SD Worx-Protime, 3rd in 2025) and Gaia Realini (Lidl-Trek, 3rd in 2023). Both Van der Breggen and Realini have previously won a stage in this race on its current week-long format, and so have Marianne Vos (current record holder in this department along with Demi Vollering, with 6 victories), Évita Muzic and Kristen Faulkner (one each). Lotte Kopecky also claimed a stage in this event back in 2021, when it was still named La Challenge by La Vuelta - and it happened on Galician soil, at Santiago de Compostela.

World-class riders on the hunt for La Roja

Just three of the riders on the startlist have ever worn La Roja, the red jersey awarded to the best rider in the overall standings of La Vuelta Femenina by Carrefour.es. They are Letizia Paternoster (2025, Stage 2), Marianne Vos (2024, Stage 4) and Gaia Realini (2024, Stage 1). Out of the three, the latter is the only one with skills suited to the climbing challenges in the final two stages - yet the Lidl-Trek rider is, by her own admission, far from her 2023 form and still making her way back to her best shape after a long series of injuries and illnesses.

Two Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift winners, Kasia Niewiadoma Phinney (Canyon//SRAM zondacrypto) and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (Visma | Lease a Bike), seem to be the top candidates to take home La Roja. The former comes “quite tired” from the Ardennes classics, where she was 4th in La Flèche Wallonne and 3rd in Liège-Bastogne-Liège, yet hopes to “finish on the podium” and “find the opportunity to raise my hands on one of the stages.” The latter was in good shape throughout the cobbled classics, finishing on the podium in both the Tour de Flanders and Paris-Roubaix Hauts de France, yet was less convincing in Liège-Bastogne-Liège (22nd). “She got dropped too early,” admits her DS, Joppe de Heij. “In any case, we believe in her and we think she’s good enough to fight for a strong result here.” Another rider in contention is FDJ United-Suez’s Juliette Berthet (née Labous), who finished inside the top-7 of all three editions of this event to date. “I'm excited about this Vuelta. My preparation has been alright and I felt really good in Liège [9th, supporting race winner Demi Vollering - ed.] I got a small cold afterwards, so I may not be at my best in the first days but we have time to grow into the week. We should not underestimate the stages in Galicia, even if the two mountain stages in Asturias are going to be crazy. The Alto de l’Angliru is not the type of climb that I like the most, but I hope I can make it to its slopes fresher than the others.” Berthet is sharing leadership with a pure ‘grimpeuse’ in Évita Muzic. “She didn't have the best season so far because she has struggled a bit with sickness, but she's getting back into shape and we will do our best together.”

SD Worx and Anna van der Breggen hoping to do “better than last year”

Team SD Worx-Protime already knows what overall success feels like in La Vuelta Femenina by Carrefour.es, as they already brought La Roja home in 2024 with Demi Vollering. To try and repeat this achievement, they are fielding a talent-packed squad this week, led by Anna van der Breggen (3rd in 2025). “I am really excited to be here. I feel really fresh and ready to race and try to improve my result from last year.” Her DS, Christian Kos, says: “We come with a nice, balanced team. We have GC ambitions with Anna, and we also have Mischa and Lotte who are both really strong riders that can go for their own results. The race is quite open and this is why we are bringing riders that can fit into different strategies.” Van der Breggen herself is wary of this. “There is not a real flat, sprint stage. We need to stay focused every single day. Trying to stay out of the crashes and not to lose any time throughout the Galicia stages is my first goal and, if I manage to do this, I hope to have some good legs and energy for the final two stages. Last year I was 3rd in GC, and I hope to do better than that.”

A rising star hoping to bring her mentor to new heights

UAE Team ADQ’s Paula Blasi has been the sensation of the cycling season so far, not only in the Spanish scene but on the global stage, after a consistent string of results that she capped off in the last two weeks of April by winning the Amstel Gold Race and standing on the podium of La Flèche Wallonne (3rd). “I’m racing this Vuelta on the momentum from the Ardennes,” says the enthusiastic Catalan rider. “I have been overwhelmed these last few days by the amount of interviews and meetings I’ve had, but this is something I also have to learn how to handle. All in all, I’m very happy and I feel I’m on the right path.” Blasi is sharing La Vuelta Femenina 26 by Carrefour.es with her mentor Mavi García, a role model for the Spanish riders who is enjoying her final season as a pro cyclist. “We are 100% backing her for a good placing in the overall standings,” asserts Blasi. “Together, we make a great duo. I’m looking forward to supporting her.” García’s best result yet in this race has been the 9th place she achieved in 2023, yet she has devotedly prepared for this edition of the Spanish grand tour. With her climbing prowess, the rider from Mallorca can legitimately aim for the final podium.

A new jersey up for grabs among the younger riders in the field

The best young rider prize now has a dedicated, distinctive white jersey thanks to Podium Bike, a young bicycle brand from Torrijos (Toledo) that has decided to support the creation of this award dedicated to riders born from 1 January 2004 onwards. 22 of the riders participating in La Vuelta Femenina 26 by Carrefour.es are contending for the white jersey this year, the favourites being Marion Bunel (Visma | Lease a Bike, winner of the 2024 Tour de l’Avenir), Eleonora Ciabocco (Picnic-PostNL, 17th overall in 2025) and her former teammate Nienke Vinke (Team SD Worx-Protime, 9th overall and best young rider last year). “The past Vuelta was really special for me,” she recalls. “It was a pretty hard race and the last day went super well so I could finish it in style and secure my first top-10 placing in a grand tour. My role this year will be a bit different, because our main goal is to win La Roja with Anna [van der Breggen] and I will focus on helping her. It would be nice to win this new white jersey, though, and you never know what could happen during the week!”

May 3, a special day for all mothers

In Spain, Mother’s Day is celebrated every first Sunday of May - which, in 2026, means this special day coincides with the opening stage of La Vuelta Femenina 26 by Carrefour.es. To commemorate this, the main sponsor of the race, Carrefour, is showcasing some special, congratulatory messages for the riders’ mothers and for any mother out there in the barriers at the closing kilometres of the race. Meanwhile, the partner of the Queen of the Mountains classification, Loterías y Apuestas del Estado, is handing out bracelets labelled “Suerte de Madre” (a wordplay in Spanish, meaning both ‘A mother’s luck’ and ‘Lucky to have a mother like mine’) and postcards featuring two renowned mothers in professional cycling, Ellen van Dijk and Lizzie Deignan, so cycling fans can celebrate Mother’s Day with their own mums.