TRANSCONTINENTAL RACE 2026 ROUTE PREVIEW

The route for the 2026 Transcontinental race has been released so in this video I take a look at the route and give my initial thoughts.

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Hello, welcome back to another video. Today I’m just going to run through the 2026 transcontinental race. So, the route has just been announced a couple of days ago. So, in this video I’m just going to take a look at the maps, um check out some of the checkpoints and the parkour sections and do a bit of a rough kind of stitch together of the route to see what riders might be expecting next summer. Um so, without further ado, uh here we go. So the first um well the main point which kind of took me by surprise a little bit is that the the route is actually north to south um for the first time ever in 2026. So it starts in Norway in Tronheim. Um so the start is the 19th of July 8:00. So it’s a nighttime start. Um and yeah for the first time ever the riders will be starting in the north Tronheim. Um passing through Norway. So, checkpoint two and the first parkour sections are in the town of Flam, I think that’s how you say it, in Norway. Um, and then heading further south, uh, into some more kind of, um, familiar territory for the transcontinental race. So, the Tatus Mountains, I think the race has been through a couple of times in Slovakia. uh Savo, there’s been a checkpoint there before and even on the early editions of the race way back in well 2015 the year I won it. Um we passed through Savvo. So yeah, kind of in the TCR Heartlands. Um Albania, there’s um Albania is always good for TCR. Um it’s never boring when you’re in Albania. Always a headache for route planning. Um always surprises. So it’s good to see Albania. Um and then a new finish in Calamat Mata in Greece. Um, so right kind of down in the south of Greece. Um, so, uh, yeah, it’s looking like a pretty pretty cool um, and interesting slightly different race and there’s going to be some puzzles to solve with route planning as always. Uh, I’ve had a bit of a quick sort of highle overview of it. I’ve not really dug into details. I think I found a few of the the little traps um, or interesting talking points. Um, so I’ll touch on those later, but to start with, I’ll go through each individual parkour. Now, all the parkour sent out on Riper GPS, so I’m just sharing the um the lost dot files. Um and yeah, we can have a little look and and see what people might expect. So, start town of Tronheim in the sort of north of Norway. Um right in the fjords. Um I I expect this would be pretty spectacular. We’ll just use a little Google man on uh on RA GPS here. Landed in a in a is it a library? Looks like a library. Um, I need to zoom in a little bit, but I suspect there’ll be some pretty stunning views of the fjords um on this start parkour. Um, and of course starting at 8:00 p.m. Um, it’s going to be daylight still. Um, I I suspect it’s going to be daylight till way 11 um and get light pretty soon after that. So, not much night riding on this first night of the um of the transcontinental race. And it looks like it’s primarily tarmac. There’s a bit of a rolling kind of parkour as you can see, but everything looks pretty good. Mountain roads, um, pretty good surfaces. Um, so I don’t I don’t expect there to be too much uh to worry about on the on the first night of the TCR. And as you can see, it’s it’s 120 odd miles. So, um, you know, it’s it’s going to be nice and simple to get going. Um, and it’s going to dump riders, I suspect, right in the middle of nowhere. Um, so this is where the fun starts as riders plot their routes. Um the the next or the first parkour and the first checkpoint is a split parkour. So 1 A um which you can see here and one B. Um so you it tends to be that um the when there when there’s a split parkour um there’s normally some kind of trick or trap involved or route choice that riders have to make. So you can see the checkpoint here is in Flam, the town of Flam. Um, but the first like part A is is pre-checkpoint on this kind of looks like mountain side here. So, let me go on to 1A. I’ve got it on um on terrain here so you can see what we’re dealing with. It’s it’s pretty hilly deep valleys. Um, and it looks like the riders are going up and over this this mountain here. Um, again, I’ll turn it on to the the Google map because the little Google man is always a good good thing to look at here. Um, and it’s kind of that that kind of classic Norwegian um, landscape. Uh, if you’ve never been there before, it’s um, a lot of it looks like this. Pretty spectacular. Um, but it looks like the road is pretty good. Um, so I suspect it’s not there’s not going to be any kind of unexpected gravel challenges like you sometimes get on on the the TCR parkour. Um, obviously it is quite open. Um, the weather could close in I I suppose, although it is summer. I mean, I’ve been through Norway and it was 35°. Um but equally um you are pretty far north so it could it could be pretty wet and wild as well. Um and then it looks like the um well the parkour finishes on top of the mountain. You can see there is a road that sort of runs down the mountain here and um I suspect most riders will take it. Um you can just about see it here on this aerial view. This must be a winter shot. Obviously I’m pretty sure there won’t be any snow when the race is going on uh in in the summer. But I I think the first kind of little decision to be made um is you can see well I’ll show you I’ll show you on the f the second section. So the first the the first section finishes on top of this mountain here. Uh and the second section of parkour starts at this um at the checkpoint in in Flam. Um now I suspect that the reason there isn’t a bit in the middle here um I do wonder if this ferry is allowed. Um I wasn’t at the presentation um a couple of days ago and I’ve not seen the route book. Um however, there is a ferry that runs up this fjord. Um so I do wonder if that is actually um an option. Um and you can see it’s it’s pretty um pretty fantastic that that terrain there. Um so I do wonder if if the ferry is an option. Um I wouldn’t have thought it makes an awful lot of sense um given there is this road here. But then I’m not quite sure if this is allowed to be cycled on. From the research I’ve done, it looks like you can ride on it. Uh, but don’t hold me to that. I’ve only had a quick brief overview of it. Um, but yeah, it didn’t doesn’t seem to make too much sense to ride down there, but maybe maybe you can get the ferry. But again, that’s a lot of that’s a choice for for riders to make. And then we’re on to the second half of this parkour. And um, as you can see on on rubber GPS, um, the surfaces are indicated by solid red lines or checkered red lines. Checker red line shows it’s gravel or off-road at least, and a solid shows that it is tarmac. So you can see here that it is is basically a gravel track. Um and now luckily the Google man works pretty well in Norway. Um and to be honest it doesn’t look anything too bad. Um it looks pretty wild. It looks like it would be really cool um to ride up there. Um and the surface it looks kind of like fairly loose gravel but it looks like you’d ride a car up there that you can see plenty of people taking photos. That’s how this um this tracks on there on Google Maps by the looks of it. So yeah, I I wouldn’t have thought it is too much of a um too taxing on bikes and like a standard road bike looks like it should be should be okay um up there. Um and then again it finishes in the middle of nowhere, but I suspect most riders will then um continue on down and this track goes on for quite a while. So it’s going to be quite a big section of gravel. Um but yeah, I mean the phrase champagne gravel comes to mind. super smooth, easy rolling, uh not too slippy gravel. Um so I think that is going to be the first kind of um off-road section of the race, but not too taxing. Uh and then it looks like it it dumps you out on this road um up here. Um and that’s when riders will have to start making their decisions about where they want to go next. Um resupply might be an issue. I can’t imagine. Well, there’s not going to be an awful lot at all from the checkpoint, so you might need to take quite a bit of food. in these towns down here. Um, doesn’t look like they’re well, it barely looks like they’re they’re kind of towns to be honest. Um, looks like they’re more just sort of like homesteads and, uh, farms and things like that. Um, found a hotel straight away, though. Um, so yeah, but I don’t think there’s going to be an abundance of of grocery stores and things like that. So, there might need to be um, a bit of consideration um, taken into uh, resupplying this first section. Um, so yeah, so that is going to mean that riders are in Norway. Um and then the next checkpoint is again it’s another split one as you can see is definitely not in Norway. Um so it’s quite a way away. Um so this one um is actually in Czech Republic and um it’s basically uh paired with this one in Slovakia with a checkpoint at the control point um in the Tatra Mountains. So essentially um you can see the reason for this. If we if we go onto the terrain layer here, it’s kind of forcing riders into the hills. Um and basically it’s going to be pretty hilly through this section here. Um the checkpoint, the the parkour itself, this first section, it really doesn’t look too bad in terms of surface. Um put the Google man up Google man up here again. It shows there’s a lake up there um with this kind of road around the top or path around the top. Um, so riders are going to go up, do a lap of this this reservoir on top of the mountain. Uh, drop back down. Looks like there is a little bit of gravel on this sector here. Um, but again, just from what I can see from Google, it doesn’t look too bad. I mean, this is going to be a bit rougher than the stuff in Norway, it looks like. Um, but it doesn’t look too bad. Um, that could be final last words. You never do know. Um, so yeah, definitely um, it’s definitely going to be challenging. Um, obviously there’s quite a bit of elevation there. Uh, and you’re going to get dumped on top of another mountain. Um, and then I guess you have to find your route from there. Uh, I suspect, um, there’s probably a couple of ways down. Um, but this is going to be one of those sort of there’s a hiking trail if you want to go down the hiking trail. I suspect there’s there’s probably going to be a bit of research needed to kind of find the the best way off this mountain. Um, it looks like you might be able to go back on yourself and around this way. Um, so this could be sort of like a dirt road down the mountains. Oh, there we go. Um, so yeah, it looks like there is a looks like a ski road. So I imagine this is a dirt track at the top. So I imagine that most riders will end up um kind of following down here somewhere and ending up in Kova Studanka. Um, which means that there’s a bit of a a puzzle to unfurl to get across to the second um section of the parkour. And this one is a bit more grally. Um, so the riders will end up um going through basically a lot of mountainous terrain. I’ll put the the Google terrain on again so you can see. So yeah, it’s going to be there’s going to be kind of some route choicing to do. Um, and the Tatra Mountains are where are they? Down here somewhere. Um, I need to find it on the Google the RI GPS map. It makes it a bit easier. Uh, low Tatra’s here. So, there’s going to be a little bit of puzzling to find the way the best way across through the mountains here. I suspect that there’s probably going to be some more direct mountainous ways, maybe some slightly more cir circuitous um uh flatter ways. Um again, that’s going to be guess going to be all in the planning for the ride. And then they’re going to hit the uh the parkour itself, which leads up to the control point. Um so, as you can see, uh the surface is a little bit grally. Um, I’ll see if we can get any any views on it. Um, well, it’s snowy here. I’m hoping by um the summer it it won’t be snowy. Um, let’s see if there’s anything else to give us a bit of a clue as to uh as to the area. Um, oh, that’s better. Um, so it looks like well, there’s not much of a track. Um, it might be one of those kind of fairly faint mountain roads or tracks and um, so yeah, that could could give some the first challenges. Uh, this is probably a better view. It doesn’t look too bad here. It looks obviously like it’s dry. I suspect if it rains, it could be pretty difficult. Um, it doesn’t look like there’s much of a surface on it. Um, so yeah, this is one of those ones that I guess could be easy or it could just take a hell of a long time depending on the weather. Um, and obviously some riders might get it dry, some might get it wet. That could affect um the timings through it. Um, and then um this kind of climb up to the checkpoint. Um, and again it looks like another mountaintop checkpoint. You can see from the elevation on the bottom that it it kind of gradually climbs up. Um, and if we go up here, you can see it’s on top of this massive mountain. Um, and the checkpoint is in this kind of looks like a cablecast ski in the background here. You can kind of see the road. Again, I suspect it’s not too bad to ride on a road bike. It looks like it’s relatively well driven. Um, but you just just have to be a little bit more obviously attentive when you’re riding off-road. Um, and then I suspect it’s going to be going back down the same way you came up. Um, it doesn’t look like at first glance there’s a way over the top. So, I suspect riders will be seeing each other coming up and down this um, uh, this this uh, this mountain. After that, um, we’re heading back to somewhere that’s that’s pretty familiar on um, on the TCR, Soo in Bosnia. Um, as I said, I passed through Sio back in 2015. Um it was a checkpoint a couple of years back. I think the the checkpoint is slightly different to then. It was on the north of the city then. Um looks like it’s again um relatively simple. Although the the nice little quirk here if if I zoom in is that it follows the Olympic bob slay track. Um now I’m not sure if you Oh, here you go. This probably look it looks like you there’s a there’s a road parallel. Um I wonder if you can actually ride down the the bob slay track. I think I’ve seen some videos of mountain bikers like bombing down this before. Maybe you get bonus seconds if you do ride down it. It would be a pretty cool experience. I’m sure someone will be stupid enough to in the race. Oh, here we go. The guy with taking the videos actually on it. Um, so yeah. Um, jury’s out whether you actually have to ride down the Bob Slay track itself or the road next to it. Um, but I think it’d be very cool if someone did write down the bobslay track. Um, so yeah, that that would be interesting. Uh, and then the climb itself or the road itself, uh, it doesn’t look too taxing. Looks pretty good. Tarmac. Um, and yeah, just a bit of a drag up to, um, to the checkpoint at the top. Um, can we see where the checkpoint is? Looks like it’s just another little mountain kind of um, uh, refuge or something like that or a hotel. Um, so yeah, that’s gives you a good overview of the type of terrain. Not really much flat at all. Lots of little valleys and hills. Not the biggest mountains in the world, but definitely not flat. So, as always, it’ll be a challenge passing through Bosnia on the TCR. Routting is always a bit of a puzzle in this part of the world. Um, you tend to get sometimes get tunnels and things which you can’t pass through. Um, and uh heading sort of in through the Balkans. I mean, it’s it’s one of the best places um to race on the TCR. Um there’s plenty of borders and border posts and crossing points to sort of negotiate. Um, and the the fourth checkpoint, as you can see, is in Albania. Um, I suspect this is going to be interesting. Obviously, there’s no Google data um for this. It’s can be pretty remote. Oh, look, there we go. There is Google data. I couldn’t find it earlier. Um, you can see it’s pretty remote. It doesn’t look like it’s a tarmac road at all, to be honest. Can we can only see this in the far distance. Looks like it’s probably going to be dirt road. Um, but I suspect a lot of these roads um in this part of Albania, they’re very well driven. There’ll be lots of little villages and stuff up there. Um it’ll be one of those ones where you’ve got to be careful. Um I’m sure there’ll be some um something to catch you out in at some point. Uh and the the checkpoint is in pitch copy. Um which is where the the checkpoint was uh on the cursed race I did a couple of years back. You can see this purple line here. Um that’s the heat maps, my heat maps and where I’ve ridden. Um so that’s that’s the route of of the a cursed race. So then uh continuing on from there um we have a new finish. Um so the Finnish parkour the finish is in Kamata like pretty much in the in the south of um of Greece here. Um it’s going to be it’s going to be interesting. It’s certainly not flat. I mean you just need to look at this this this parkour. It’s quite a long one. 107 miles here. Um pretty big mountains. Again I rode through this area on the Helenic Mountain Race um earlier this year. Um, you see kind of roughly where I went. Um, and yeah, it’s tough. They’re big old climbs. It’s going to be hot, really hot. Um, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s touching like 40 degrees at times during the day. Um, so water is going to be tricky. Um, resupply. I mean, food’s good when you can get it. Um, certainly on the cursed race, it it was it was good in the bigger towns, but we were in quite remote countryside. Um, obviously on the road, you’d be passing more more villages, so should be okay. Um, but it looks like it’s a fairly good tarmac road. Um, I can’t imagine it’s it’s massively well driven, so it should be fairly quiet. Um, but yeah, looks pretty cool. You can see the size of the mountains there. Um, so it’s going to be it’s going to be um, I guess a tough finish, but it’s always good when you’re downhill to finish a race and it looks like that is going to be the case on this edition of T. So yeah, then the the actual finish itself um, looks like it’s on the beach um, in Calamata. Um, that should be pretty cool. Um, I’ll see if there’s a bit of a a Google image there. Um, so it looks like it’s on the on the harbor there somewhere. We’re actually in the shipyard here. Um, but yeah, should be a nice place to hang out um at the finish and it looks like a big enough town to have plenty of accommodation. Um, so yeah, that’s um that is the final sort of parkour. Um, and what I’ve done is I’ve basically stitched them together. Um, so you know, the the bigger picture um is always more interesting. The first thing that strikes me, it’s going to be a long one. Um, so this is obviously um this is this is this isn’t like over planned. I’ve basically connected all the checkpoints together on Ryber GPS. Maybe moved the dot a little bit or the route in a little bit of times to to take a sort of a route that I think is going to be more sensible. Um, but it looks like it’s going to be around the 3,000 mile mark, which is is pretty substantial. Um, I’d say that’s probably one of the longest TCRs ever. And if you look at the elevation, there really isn’t much in the way of flat. Um you got this big sort of flat section in the middle. Um obviously it depends where people go. Um but yeah, it’s it’s it’s forcing riders kind of to take quite a a hilly route and quite you know for quite a lot a lot of the time. Certainly Norway is is pretty hilly. Um I suspect Sweden is going to be on the itinerary of of many rides. And I guess the first big question is going to be the ferry games. There is there is going to have to well I suspect there’s going to have to be a ferry taken at some point. Um looks like there’s a few options. So I’ve just picked this one here which goes from the south of Copenhagen. Uh this seemed like the most obvious route to me. Um but there is a couple of options too. There’s one ferry here. There’s one across here. There’s actually another ferry that runs from further um east. Um so yeah, that’s going to be the ferry games are going to be pretty key here. Um there’s also a ferry that runs uh further north up here as well or a few fies further north here. Um so I guess um I don’t think they run that often. So I’ve taken this Gothberg ferry before. I think it’s like three times a day. Uh so planning is going to be quite key I think in this in this this early stage. Um but it’s early on on early on enough in the race that I don’t think it’s going to make a huge difference. Um but yeah, certainly something that’s going to be um something to consider um as you as you’re planning the route. Um so yeah, my my gut instinct was that this one of these southern feries would be better. I mean, it might even be better to ride all the way down here. Um I think you can probably ride across. Oh, there’s a little ferry here. Not sure you can ride this bridge here. It might be better to ride all the way down and just take the shorter ferry. Shorter fies um tend to be more regular. Um but yeah, it’s kind of a balance of of kind of ride time versus rest time. Um so yeah, looking at ferry timets is going to be key for this this kind of um this first big ferry crossing. Um then I mean I think this section here, it’s going to be transitional. Uh I I I suspect most people are going to go through Poland or or kind of the far east of Germany. It’s not really too tough in terms of riding. Um should be plenty of accommodation and things like that. And then obviously the routes here are kind of dictated uh by the checkpoints. Um again there’s going to be some planning required. It’s going to be pretty hilly. Um but you know that’s kind of what what the TCR is about. And then straight across Hungary I suspect pretty much everyone’s going to take a very similar route across Hungary. Um obviously it’s pretty flat there. So that’s going to be somewhat of a rest period and then it’s going to be non-stop until the end there. So threading kind of a a route through um through Bosnia, Montenegro. Um, this one actually goes into Kosovo, which can cause problems. Um, although this is going in and out of Kosovo, not touching Serbia, so that might be okay. I’ve actually ridden some of that section. Um, and then, yeah, just sort of threading your way through um through the checkpoint uh into Greece and then the final ferry games. Um, there are going to be ferry games at the finish. There always are. There’s always something. Um, this bridge here seems like the place where most people are going to cross. However, it is a motorway and I know that because I rode across it or went across it on a bus after the um uh the Hellenic race finished. So, you can’t ride on this section, I don’t think. Um from memory, it does look like there’s a path down the side, but I’m not sure you’re allowed to access it on a bike. Um but there is a ferry here. Um so, we actually there’s actually a couple of fairies here. Uh these look like they kind of go a bit more regularly. Um, so you can see from this overhead, you can actually see the fairies going to and from here. So there’s obviously one going one way and one the other. Um, so yeah, the Helenic Mountain Race finished around this bay here. Um, coming over this one of these big old mountains. Um, and then TR is going to be heading into those mountains there. Um, but yeah, so ferry games at the end there. I don’t think they’re going to be too decisive and there’s enough distance and hard enough parkour between the ferry port. Um, and that’s that’s going to be like half an hour tops. I think the ferry the ferry port and the finish to um to mean that it’s not kind of all sort of hingent on that ferry and a lot happens between you know here and the start. So um I don’t think that is it’s too much of thing to get worried about. Um so yeah so that is my kind of my brief overview of the the 2026 TCR route. I think it’s going to be interesting actually. Um I mean it’s going to be it could be fairly cold in the north. could be sort of, you know, um, five or six degrees and quite cold, especially if the rain comes in, um, which it can do. Um, but there’s not going to be much in the way of nighttime. And then I think it’s just going to get gradually warmer and warmer as riders go south. So maybe, um, some some gear kind of choice might be important in the north. Um it is tempting to to skip skimp on uh on rain gear and the warm gear and the like on TCR knowing that you’re always going to be getting warmer, but seeing as it’s starting so far north, um it’s definitely definitely worth considering, I think. Um and yeah, the ferry games, they’re going to be key. I think this section sort of coming from Norway to to mainland Europe is going to be um a key planning point. Um and that’s that could not make or break but certainly um certainly sort of derail some rides or some riders kind of um plans. Um so yeah, I think early stages of the race are going to be based on on one of the ferry timets. Um so yeah, going to be interesting. I’m looking forward to it. I’ll be doing my daily coverage um as I always do by the time the TCR comes along and uh yeah, very much looking forward to it. So hopefully I’ll see you all then. Thanks for watching and catch you in another