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The Vuelta a España has always been the slightly unruly member of cycling’s Grand Tour family. The Tour de France carries the weight of history and expectation. The Giro offers beauty and brutality in roughly equal measure. The Vuelta? The Vuelta likes steep roads, strange finishes, oppressive heat and racing that occasionally seems to abandon tactics altogether.

The 2026 edition, beginning Saturday, August 22, looks particularly well equipped to continue that tradition.

It starts with a short individual time trial through Monaco and ends three weeks later in Granada, rather than the traditional Madrid finale. Between those two points are seven major summit finishes, a 32-kilometer time trial late in the race, excursions through France and Andorra, and a route that spends much of its time in southern Spain, where heat could become as important as gradient. The queen stage comes on the penultimate day, with more than 5,000 meters of climbing before the finish atop Collado del Alguacil.

And looming over the whole race is Tadej Pogačar.

Pogačar Comes for the Missing Grand Tour

Pogačar arrives in Spain as the obvious center of attention. He hasn't ridden the Vuelta since 2019, when a 20-year-old version of the Slovenian announced himself to the wider cycling world by winning three stages and finishing third overall.

Seven years later, the circumstances are rather different.

Pogačar comes to the Vuelta having won the Tour de France, and victory in Spain would give him wins in all three Grand Tours over his career. Jonas Vingegaard, meanwhile, won't be here to oppose him. That leaves four-time Vuelta winner Primož Roglič as perhaps the most intriguing challenger, alongside riders including Oscar Onley, Felix Gall, Richard Carapaz, João Almeida and Enric Mas.

The route certainly gives the climbers enough opportunities to hurt one another. The first serious test comes almost immediately, with a summit finish at Font-Romeu on Stage 3 followed by another mountainous day in Andorra. The race then keeps returning to the mountains: Aitana on Stage 9, Calar Alto on Stage 12, La Pandera on Stage 14 and Peñas Blancas on Stage 19 all feature before that enormous penultimate stage.

But the most interesting rider in this Vuelta may not be trying to win the red jersey at all.

It may be Wout van Aert.

Wout Has Unfinished Business

Van Aert's relationship with the Vuelta is brief but memorable.

In 2024, he won three stages and was leading the points classification before crashing out of the race. He returns two years later with something to settle — and with a course that gives one of cycling's great all-purpose riders an extraordinary number of ways to win.

Van Aert also arrives after an unusual season. An elbow injury from a June training crash kept him out of the Tour de France, so this will be his first Grand Tour in more than a year. But his season has hardly been unsuccessful: he has seven victories in 2026, most notably Paris-Roubaix. He also finished second at the Belgian Gravel Championships in his final tune-up before the Vuelta.

That last result isn't merely an eccentric bit of pre-Vuelta preparation.

Stage 6 contains a three-kilometer gravel sector on the Puerto El Bartolo, a 9.1-kilometer climb averaging 7.2%, followed by roughly 20 kilometers to the finish. It is almost comically well suited to Van Aert: climbing, gravel, descending and then the possibility of a reduced sprint.

And that's just one opportunity.

The opening 9.4-kilometer time trial in Monaco gives him an immediate chance to contend for a stage victory — and perhaps even the first red jersey. There are flatter stages where he can sprint, rolling stages where he can attack, and difficult transition days where the pure sprinters may be dropped but Van Aert may survive.

In other words, the question isn't really whether there's a stage for Wout van Aert at this Vuelta.

It's how many there are.

Visma Can Let Wout Be Wout

Visma-Lease a Bike's team composition makes the situation even more interesting.

Without Vingegaard, the team doesn't have to organize its entire Vuelta around controlling the race for an overwhelming GC favorite. Sepp Kuss, winner of the 2023 Vuelta, provides its principal general-classification option, while 21-year-old Matthew Brennan gives Visma a fast finisher for the more conventional sprints. Christophe Laporte adds another formidable stage hunter.

That potentially gives Van Aert freedom.

He doesn't need to pretend to be a GC rider. He doesn't necessarily need to be Visma's designated sprinter every time the road is flat. And he shouldn't have to spend three weeks acting primarily as a super-domestique.

He can instead do the thing that makes Wout van Aert races so entertaining: look at almost any stage profile and plausibly decide that he could win it.

The green jersey is therefore an obvious secondary storyline. Van Aert was on course to win it in 2024 before his crash, and his versatility means he can collect points on days when more conventional sprinters cannot. A serious points-classification campaign would inevitably drag him into breakaways, intermediate sprints and reduced finishes throughout the race.

Mads Pedersen complicates that ambition considerably. The Lidl-Trek rider is another unusually durable sprinter who can survive hard terrain, and his presence could turn the green-jersey competition into one of the best races within the race.

Three Weeks That Should Resist Control

That may ultimately be the great attraction of the 2026 Vuelta.

Pogačar is strong enough that the battle for red could become predictable. But almost everything surrounding it looks gloriously difficult to control.

Roglič is chasing a record fifth Vuelta. Kuss returns to the race that produced the greatest victory of his career. Pedersen and Van Aert can contest sprints one day and attack over climbs the next. The opening week provides immediate GC tests rather than allowing contenders to ease into the race. And the final week combines heat, mountains and a long time trial before one last monstrous climbing stage.

Even the geography feels different. Starting among the yachts and apartment towers of Monaco before eventually finishing at the Alhambra in Granada gives the race a journey-like quality that the traditional Madrid circuit finale sometimes lacks.

Pogačar may ultimately be too strong. That has become a familiar possibility whenever he clips into his pedals.

But Grand Tours aren't remembered only for who stands on the top step of the final podium. They're remembered for the days when somebody attacks when they shouldn't, survives when they shouldn't, or looks at a ridiculous stretch of road and decides to turn it into a race.

Few riders are better at that than Wout van Aert.

And this Vuelta has given him three weeks of roads on which to try.