Tadej Pogacar, five-time winner of the Tour de France, will participate in the Tour of Spain (August 22 – September 13) for the first time since 2019, his UAE-Emirates team announced on X on Monday.
“That’s right, he’s back. Tadej Pogacar confirmed for the Vuelta,” writes UAE, revealing the list of its riders who will participate in the event.
The Tour of Spain is the last Grand Tour missing from the record of the 27-year-old Slovenian rider, five times winner of the Tour de France (2020, 2021, 2024, 2025, 2026), the Tour of Italy in 2024 and twice world champion (2024, 2025).
“I am very happy to announce that I will return to La Vuelta. It was my very first Grand Tour in 2019 and I had an incredible experience there,” Pogacar said on his team’s website.
“Spain is a country that I love to visit and where I love to run, and I think the time has come to return,” he adds.
Three stages in 2019
Then starting on the professional circuit, he revealed himself on the Vuelta in 2019 with three mountain stage victories, then finishing in third place in the general classification behind the final winner, his compatriot Primoz Roglic, and the Spaniard Alejandro Valverde.
The Slovenian “cannibal” will be accompanied by the Portuguese Joao Almeida and Ivo Oliveira, the Australian Jay Vine and the Frenchman Pavel Sivakov to try to become the fourth rider to win the Tour de France and the Vuelta in the same year, and the ninth with the three Grand Tours to his name.
The Vuelta will start on August 22 from Monaco and end three weeks later, on September 13, in Granada, at the end of a route which will follow the Spanish coast to Andalusia, without passing through the capital, Madrid.
