# Stage 18: Voiron → Orcières-Merlette · Tour de France 2026

Thursday, July 23 (2026-07-23) · 185 km · Summit Finish · Start 12:35 local

Page: https://parcours.sh/stage/tour-de-france-2026-stage-18
Race: https://parcours.sh/race/tour-de-france-2026
Profile image: https://parcours.sh/og/tour-de-france-2026-stage-18.png

A stage finishing at Orcières-Merlette after several climbs, including a final ascent.

**Stages shaped like this went to the breakaway or a solo attacker 21 of 38 times — 6 from the day's break, 15 late attacks.** (aggregated from the closest 2011–2025 WorldTour lookalikes in the Parcours similarity corpus)

## Key climbs

- **Côte d'Engins** — Cat 1, at km 36.7, 11.5 km long, avg 5.4%
- **Côte de Monteynard** — Cat 2, at km 93.5, 9.7 km long, avg 5%
- **Côte des Terrasses** — Cat 3, at km 112.8, 3.4 km long, avg 6.6%
- **Côte de Saint-Léger-les-Mélèzes** — Cat 3, at km 166.2, 2.5 km long, avg 6.9%
- **Orcières-Merlette** — Cat 1, at km 185.2, 7.1 km long, avg 6.7%

## Intermediate sprints

- **Corps** — intermediate sprint at km 129.1

Total elevation gain: 3726 m · Max elevation: 1826 m

Best viewing window (local time): 16:40–17:25.

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Data by Parcours (https://parcours.sh) — elevation profiles, key climbs and watch windows for the 2026 WorldTour season.