Tour de France 2025 - 21st stage: Voigt's preview: Hectic instead of a lap of honour?

Stage 21 | Sunday, 27 July 2025 | Mantes-La-Ville - Paris | 132.3 kilometres | 1100 vertical metres

Jens Voigt's assessment of the 21st stage

The new route of the final stage in Paris changes everything. The finale will not be largely flat over the Champs-Élysées, but three times in a row on a 17-kilometre lap over the "Butte Montmartre", on the Rue Lepic up to the Sacré-Cœur Basilica (1.1 kilometres at 5.9 per cent). There will definitely be no bunch sprint at the finish on the Champs-Élysées this year, which is only six kilometres after the last crossing at the mountain classification in the Montmartre district (4th category).

This route change could once again be a crucial point in the entire Tour. This could be a finale for guys like Wout van Aert or Julian Alaphilippe. In any case, the changed Tour finale means extra stress. On the narrow road to the Sacré-Cœur, it will be important to be well ahead on the first approach. It will be similar to the approach to the Arenberg forest in Paris-Roubaix. If the leaders in the overall classification are only separated by one or two minutes before the stage, the stage could become the crux of this Tour and changes among the top positions are not impossible.

I'm not a fan of this innovation: in my opinion, it would have been enough to ride Montmartre once early in the stage, then you could have had beautiful pictures like at the Olympic Games last year and then do the usual laps on the Champs-Élysées.

Schedule, TV coverage & live stream of the 21st stage of the Tour de France 2025

• Neutral start: 16:10, sharp start 16:25
• Estimated arrival time: between 19:26 and 19:45
• TV broadcast: ARD 16:05-19:58, Eurosport 1 15:45-20:00
• Live stream: sportschau.de, Discovery Plus (fee required)
• All stages of the Tour de France 2025 at a glance

Highlights of the 21st stage

• 16:40: Soon after the start, two 4th category mountain classifications await. Will there be the traditional Tour d'Honneur at the end? Or will everything be different?
• 18:20: It's off to the final laps of Montmartre. Will it be an unusual Tour finale? Finish of this tour: around 19:30. The award ceremony follows

TOUR expert Jens Voigt

Nobody in the German-speaking world knows the Tour de France better: Jens Voigt competed as a professional in the most important cycling race a total of 17 times between 1998 and 2014. Only the Frenchman Sylvain Chavanel, the current record holder, has managed one more participation. Voigt knows the race from the perspective of the winner and the tireless helper in the team. He won two stages himself and wore the yellow jersey for one day each in 2001 and 2005. In 2010, as a team-mate in Team Saxo Bank, he accompanied Luxembourg's Andy Schleck to his overall victory (after the doping disqualification of Alberto Contador, who initially came first; editor's note). The 53-year-old Berliner currently works as a brand ambassador for the bike manufacturer Trek and as a pundit for the Eurosport channel.

For TOUR readers, the former pro gives his predictions for the course of the 21 stages, points out difficulties and things worth seeing. For each day's stage, he gives a tip on what role the course could play in the final standings in the individual classifications in Paris. If three of the jerseys are coloured, this means that this day could be decisive for this classification - i.e. overall classification (yellow), sprint/points classification (green) and classification of the best climber (red dotted jersey). We also give you the broadcast times of the TV channels in Germany (ARD and Eurosport) and their live streams - plus tips on when it might be particularly worth tuning in.