Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift 2025: History and how to Watch the Femmes

The 2025 edition of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift gets underway on 26 July. And if there’s one race on the women’s professional road racing calendar that highlights both the raw potential and glaring imbalance in the sport, it’s the Tour de France Femmes. An absolute must-watch – because women’s cycling is on fire right now – 2025 marks just the fourth edition of the race. Yes, only four.

Why is 2025 only the 4th edition of the Tour de France Femmes?

While the men have had their shot at immortality since 1903, the women’s peloton only got its own (ahem, “condensed”) version in 2022. After years of lobbying and a very public push from riders and fans, the sport’s gatekeepers finally relented. A 100,000-strong petition helped nudge things along. And the move to run a women’s stage race on par with the men’s version came, slowly.

Sure, there were loosely structured versions of a women’s Tour de France between 1984 and 2009. But it was the persistence of riders like Kathryn Bertine, Marianne Vos, Emma Pooley and professional triathlete Chrissie Wellington – who banded together in 2013 under the campaign Le Tour Entier to pressure the ASO (official organisers of the Tour de France) – that finally moved the needle. It still took another nine years for minds to change.

Politics aside, the Tour de France Femmes now runs over nine days, taking in a tough route across France. It may not have the three-week sprawl of its male counterpart (debate: do we even need that?), but what it lacks in length, it more than makes up for in racing intensity. Every day counts. With 154 women on the start list and € 250,000 on the line (just 10% of the men’s prize pot), this is the biggest prize purse available in women’s road racing. The stakes are therefore high, and the drama even higher.

By now, the Tour de France Femmes has become essential viewing for any sports fan. The previous three editions are a roll call of modern women’s cycling:

• Annemiek Van Vleuten dominated the first edition,
• then Demi Vollering wrapped up the second version in 2023,
• whilst Kasia Niewiadoma beat defending champion Demi Vollering in a battle that came down to precious seconds on L’Alpe d’Huez.

The entire race was edge-of-your-seat stuff: attacks, crashes, questionable tactics, and that final stage up L’Alpe d’Huez where Vollering attempted to claw back yellow. She won the stage but lost by just four seconds in the GC, leaving one of the peloton’s most enigmatic riders Niewiadoma with the overall win.

Niewiadoma wept at the finish. So did Vollering, choking back tears of frustration over the question of what if her team had waited for her after that crash on the roundabout. The answer being a change of teams in 2025.

Where to watch the 2025 Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift

This year, the stakes feel even higher. And so, naturally you can and should watch each single stage. Here’s how you can Watch the Femmes!

UK:
ITV, TNT Sports, and Discovery+ will provide coverage.

US:
NBC Sports and Peacock (for streaming) are the channels to watch.

Australia:
SBS will be broadcasting the race.

Other options include FloBikes in Canada, France Télévisions and Eurosport France in France, and Eurosport for viewers across Europe and Southeast Asia. You can also check local listings for channels like RTVE in Spain, RAI in Italy, and RTBF in Belgium. If you’re travelling, a VPN can help you access your usual streaming services.

It’s only 9 stages (for now), with many fans continuing to push for a proper Grand Tour-length event. But from July 26 to August 3, we at CYCLING247 are going to be glued to our screens. 

Check out our 2025 Tour de Frances Femmes route preview and stay tuned for our ones to watch list!