Playing Tour De France 2026 feels a bit odd if you’re a cyclist. Now, I’m a triathlete, which means some riders turn their nose up at the fact I like to do a spot of swimming, drench my bike in lake water and then go for a run after hopping back off, but I am a real cyclist, with a silly bike – that’s a Ribble Ultra SL-R if you’re interested – a drawer full of lycra, and a bunch of unnecessary ‘aero’ items to make me go as fast as possible. That’s right, even the hallowed ‘aero’ socks.
Playing Tour De France 2026 feels weird to me because it feels like cycling, but without any of the physical effort. If you’re used to the gamified exercise of Rouvy, Zwift or Training Peaks, what you’re getting involved in here is a training session without moving your legs, without the watts output or heart rate peaks, and without the downpour of sweat onto your laminate flooring. Part of me really likes it, and the other part? It thinks I should be on my Wattbike.
Tour de France 2026 translates the cycling experience into a gaming one with a controller setup that’s part racing game, and part Souls-like stamina fest. You hold a trigger to move your legs, and the other to brake, while you can hammer X to break away and to pump your legs harder than your opponent, attempting to crush them physically and psychologically as you leave them watching your blinking radar light in the distance. OK, so there is some physical exertion, but it’s about as much you get from a thumb war.
That’s for your standard events, with TT – that’s time trial – races requiring a little more input and commitment. Here you also have to juggle getting into an aerodynamic TT position, as well as managing your effort through the session. The TT position is faster, but you can’t corner very well with your hands on the TT bars, so you have to know when to get in and out of this form. If you’re a cyclist who’s ever ridden tri-bars, it all makes perfect sense.
There’s then effort to consider. You have a yellow bar indicating how hard you’re pushing, a blue one to indicate overall energy levels, as well as a red energy bar which you can use for extreme efforts. You have to manage these three gauges through races and time trials if you want to succeed, knowing when to back off, or when you’ve got enough in the tank to go harder.
Throughout my time with Tour de France 2026, the thing I was most impressed with was just how accurate to the cycling experience it feels. Whether it’s those pushes through hill climbs or to break away from your opponents, latching onto the peloton, or the sound of your breathing as you work hard on the bike, this feels like cycling to me. There’s little in the way of audio beyond the sound of your wheels, your laboured breathing, and the cheering of fans as you whizz by – this effect pleasingly captured by positional audio – making it feel pretty zen at times.
You will be ripped out of that state by the announcer. He leaps in with information and bios for some of the riders, but it’s stilted and often hard to know what he’s talking about. He’s generally wittering away about the leaders, but if you’re a long way away from them, it can all feel a decidedly low rent and detached.
That’s amplified by the visuals. Some elements of the game look fair – that’s mainly the bicycles and the riders, and the weather effects which bring a whole new aspect to the racing – but outside of the cities and towns, the majority of the landscapes you’ll be riding through look incredibly basic. Yes, you’re spending more of your time focusing on your stamina bars and the other riders on the course, but there’s numerous reminders that this is not a good-looking game, from clear anti-aliasing shimmer, to egregious pop-in, and spectators that skate into the road as you approach them, which feels disappointing when the cycling part feels as true to the sport as it does.
At least you’ve got a decent selection of modes to hop in and out of, including regular races, multiplayer, Pro Team, and Pro Leader with the latter letting you take a created rider through a season of UCI-approved racing. Races are long and gruelling, just like in real life, but you can save midway through a stage if you need to take a break. If only you could do that in real life.
There are further annoyances beyond the visuals, from the overwhelming strength of Pogačar, who’ll decimate anybody through the final stages, to the fact that riders don’t age when playing through multiple seasons, meaning that there’s no ebb and flow to year-on-year action, other than your own team’s improvements. It all feels a little too static, and set in place, when you really want it to capture the reality of development and experience, tempered by ageing, injury and illness. If you’re the type of person who’s buying Tour de France 2026, you’re not likely to care quite as much, but there’s the real sensation that cycling fans very nearly have a great game on their hands, and it’s just not quite there.