Paris-Tours 2026: The Vineyard Tracks and What Teams Ride on Them

Summary

• DirectVelo reported on 17 September 2026 that the 120th Paris-Tours runs on Sunday 11 October, 216.2 km from Chartres to Tours, with ten chemins de vigne sectors covering 10.5 km inside the final 70 km.
• ASO has not published a sector by sector list, and the race site gives the route as 212 km, so the distance is provisional.
• 24 teams are entered: 12 WorldTeams, eight ProTeams and four continental squads, per DirectVelo.
• This is still a road race. At Paris-Roubaix in April 2026, Cyclist counted 32 mm tyres on road frames across almost the whole peloton, with Tadej Pogačar on 35 mm front and 32 mm rear.
• No team publishes tyre pressures for Paris-Tours. Any pressure figure attached to this race is somebody's estimate.

What is confirmed and what is not

Paris-Tours closes the European road season and has done so since 1896. The 2026 edition is the 120th. DirectVelo, reporting the team selection on 17 September, gives Sunday 11 October, 216.2 km from Chartres to Tours, and ten sectors of vineyard track totalling 10.5 km inside the last 70 km.

Two other numbers are in circulation. The official race site lists the route as 212 km, and a France Télévisions broadcast release dated 22 September calls it roughly 230 km. ASO had not published the road book when this was written. The finish is on Boulevard Béranger in the centre of Tours, as in 2025.

Why the vineyard tracks matter

The race was redrawn in 2018. The start moved to Chartres, seven new climbs went in, the distance came down to around 211 km, and 12.5 km of unpaved vineyard tracks were laid inside the final 60 km.

The winners since then tell the story. Søren Kragh Andersen, Jelle Wallays, Casper Pedersen, Arnaud Démare twice, Riley Sheehan, Christophe Laporte, then Matteo Trentin in 2025. Fast finishers still win, but they arrive in a group of six rather than a bunch of a hundred. Trentin covered 211.6 km in 4h 18' 50", ahead of Laporte and Albert Philipsen.

Tyres: what is actually documented

Nobody publishes a tyre table for Paris-Tours. What we have is a run of documented choices from comparable races.

The BikeRadar measurements are the useful part. Across 26 tyres at the 2026 Tour, the average measured 1.79 mm wider than its sidewall said. Nominal 30 mm was the most common size, on 12 of the 26 tyres, with 28 mm on 11. The widest were Matej Mohorič at 33.65 mm rear and Jonas Vingegaard at 33.2 mm front. On a modern wide rim the number printed on the casing is a starting point, not a measurement.

Ten short sectors of loose vineyard track inside a 216 km road race do not justify a gravel tread. They justify the widest road tyre the frame genuinely takes, set up tubeless, run softer than usual.

Pressure: the honest answer

We could not find a published pressure figure for any rider at Paris-Tours, in any recent edition. Teams do not release them and the press does not chase them for a ProSeries one day race.

The nearest documented reference is from a rougher race. Escape Collective recorded 3.5 bar, about 50 psi, for Teniel Campbell at Paris-Roubaix Femmes in April 2023, and noted that this was above the peloton average. Paris-Tours is a different problem: the vineyard tracks are loose and rutted rather than cobbled, and the other 205 km are tarmac.

Frames: a road bike with room, or a gravel race bike

The clearance spread in the current market is wide, and most of it is published.

BikeRadar asked Pinarello why the Dogma F stopped at 30 mm. The answer was that going wider would have cost frame stiffness. That is the trade in one sentence, and it is why some very fast road frames are tight for this kind of race. Cyclist called the clearance on Lotto-Intermarché's Orbea Orca Aero at Roubaix extremely tight: 32 mm tyres on a frame officially rated to 30 mm.

At the other end, the 2027 gravel race bikes carry tyres nobody would race on a vineyard track. The Ridley Kanzo Fast 2.0 clears a 29x2.3 mountain bike tyre. The Factor Elara clears 57 mm. Paris-Tours sits between the two categories.

One detail from Roubaix 2026 may reappear here: single chainring drivetrains. Cyclist reported Visma on SRAM Red with a 54T ring, Ineos Grenadiers on custom 1x chainrings with Shimano XTR mountain bike rear derailleurs, and Decathlon-CMA CGM on a 56T. Dropping the front derailleur removes the part most likely to fail in mud.

Every strand of this year's tyre argument meets on these ten sectors. Rims got wider, so tyres measure wider than their label. Road frames slowly opened up to 32 mm. Gravel race bikes jumped to 57 mm and left a gap behind them. Paris-Tours asks a rider to pick a point on that scale and live with it for 216 km.

What it means if you are buying pre-owned

If your riding includes farm tracks, white roads or a gravel section on the way home, a road frame with real 32 mm clearance covers it. So does a gravel race bike on a fast 40 mm tyre, at the cost of some speed on tarmac. Neither is right in the abstract.

Three things to check on any candidate. The clearance with the rim and tyre you intend to run, measured rather than taken from the brochure. The rim internal width, because a 25 mm internal rim can add 2 mm to a tyre's measured width. And whether the wheels are tubeless, since a wide tyre at low pressure with an inner tube gives back most of the benefit.

Would a gravel bike suit a route like this better?

Only if the unpaved share is much higher than the 5% Paris-Tours runs. Where the route is mostly tarmac with short rough sectors, a road frame on a wide tubeless tyre is faster.

How wide can I go on a 2020 to 2023 race frame?

Often less than you hope. Frames of that generation were commonly rated to 28 mm, and a nominal 28 on a modern wide rim can measure over 30. Measure before buying tyres.

The road category on Bikeroom is where frames with generous clearance sit, and the pre-owned road collection holds the previous generation of race bikes. If the gravel side of the question is the live one, the gravel category and our guide to choosing between road and gravel go through it. For ex-team bikes, see our guide to buying a pre-owned WorldTour bike.

If you are weighing a road frame with 32 mm clearance against a gravel race bike for the mix of surfaces you actually ride, talk to our concierge.

Sources: DirectVelo, 17 September 2026; paris-tours.fr, official race site; France Télévisions press release, 22 September 2026; Wikipedia, Paris-Tours; Wikipedia, 2025 Paris-Tours; Cyclist, Will Strickson, 14 April 2026; BikeRadar, Ashley Quinlan, 9 July 2026; BikeRadar, Ashley Quinlan, 26 August 2025; BikeRadar, Oscar Huckle, 20 June 2024; road.cc, Emily Tillett, 8 July 2024; Escape Collective, Ronan Mc Laughlin, 12 April 2023. Cover photo: Benjamin Smith, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.