Sunday September 27th 2026: World Championships RR ME – Brossard – Montréal (273.7 km)

On Sunday, September 27, the elite men's road race will take place in Montréal, marking the finale of the 93rd edition of the UCI Road World Championships. The riders will cover a distance of 273.7 kilometers with 3,803 meters of elevation gain, on a course leading from Brossard to the center of Montréal. This marks the World Championships' return to the Canadian city for the first time since 1974.

Course

Starting in Brossard, south of Montréal, the route takes the peloton over a predominantly flat opening section of more than one hundred kilometers, save for a slight change in direction after approximately 30 kilometers. Following the banks of the St. Lawrence River and crossing the Samuel De Champlain Bridge, the peloton reaches the finish line in downtown Montréal for the first time after 112 kilometers; this is where the local circuit around Mont-Royal begins.

The remaining 161.7 kilometers consist of twelve laps of 13.4 kilometers each, with 269 meters of elevation gain per lap. Each lap begins with the Côte Camillien-Houde (1.7 km at 7.4%), the circuit's longest and toughest climb. The descent is quickly followed by the Chemin de la Polytechnique (780 meters at 6%)—the course's steepest rise, with gradients reaching double digits—and then the Avenue Pagnuelo (500 meters at 7.5%). From there, the course descends back to the finish on the slightly rising Avenue du Parc, near Parc Jeanne-Mance. There is hardly any time for recovery: the riders must tackle the same series of short, punchy climbs twelve times over.

Recent editions

Defending champion Tadej Pogačar, world champion in 2024 and 2025, is absent this year: the Slovenian suffered a broken collarbone, a concussion and a fractured vertebra in the neck during the Vuelta a España and subsequently ended his season. His absence opens up the field of favourites for, among others, Remco Evenepoel, Paul Seixas, Isaac del Toro, Mathieu van der Poel, Wout van Aert and Tom Pidcock.

Local

Of the participants, Hugo Houle (Canada) has the deepest local roots: the rider from Sainte-Perpétue, in the province of Québec, celebrates his 36th birthday on race day itself. Houle made history in 2022 as the first Canadian in 34 years to win a Tour de France stage. Montréal has hosted the WorldTour one-day race GP Cycliste de Montréal annually since 2010, meaning a large part of the field of favourites already knows the local circuit around Mont-Royal well.

Scenarios

With 3,803 metres of climbing over 273.7 kilometres and twelve repetitions of the same combination of short, sharp climbs, this route is closer to a tough classic than a flat road race. Mathieu van der Poel showed in late September that he is in form with a 170-kilometre solo at the Tour of Luxembourg, but the accumulation of climbs over this distance will be a tougher test for him and Wout van Aert than a classic one-day race.

Puncheurs such as Remco Evenepoel, Isaac del Toro and Paul Seixas already benefited from the many short climbs on this same circuit in early September during the GP Cycliste de Montréal, where Del Toro won ahead of Seixas, while Evenepoel was dropped on the Camillien-Houde. A similar scenario, with a select group surviving the final laps, seems likely.

With a calmer pace in the early laps, a larger group could survive the final climbs, which would offer chances to fast riders who can also hold their own uphill, such as Wout van Aert and Tom Pidcock.

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