Where sprints smash, mountains humble, and your AI teammates forget how legs work. Tour de France 2025 is here!
Cyanide Studio has been perfecting its two-wheeled obsession with the Tour de France for more than ten years. The annual cycling sim lets you live out your dreams of winning the world’s toughest bike race without ever having to leave your couch. The series has grown into a full-on pro cycling simulator since its early days with bad AI and menus that were hard to use.
Cyanide doesn’t try to make the Tour de France 2025 completely new. Instead, they just polish the spokes, grease the chain, and put a Red Bull logo on Primož Roglič. Even though it still feels like the Tour de France, it finally feels like a real mix of sport management and gameplay.
As a sports simulation, the “story” is something you make up. There are no pre-rendered dramas or cinematic arcs. Instead, your story unfolds in real-time as you lead your team through stages and choose whether to help a sprinter reach the Champs-Élysées or send Roglič on a solo attack up Mont Ventoux.
Still, each stage turns into a mini-story: will your breakaway make it? Will your plan to ride in a peloton work? Might you be able to drop Pogačar before he teleports up a mountain like a fairy god? You are the leader, the rider, and sometimes the poor guy who gets stuck in the wind for 70 km because your AI forgot to help.
That’s not all; you’re also managing. At the start of each stage, there is a strategic set-up that includes who is protected, who is riding fast, and who is trying to sneak into the breakaway. You can then choose to control a rider by hand or let the AI do it for you.
The tempo controls can be switched between “auto” and “manual.” During sprint stages, you have to place and time your launch. It’s important to save energy, keep a steady pace, and know when to gel up like a Tour de France 2025 jelly addict. You have to make little choices all the time, like whether you should attack now or later. Ride behind Remco or take a chance on the wind?
In order to close a minute gap, you could send your team to the front with 10 km to go. While Bennett sits this one out and drinks a juice box. You realize that everyone on your team is getting hot while the breakaway group stubbornly holds on to the lead. Or you’re trying to catch a sprint finish on the Champs while dodging riders who have broken away and are dying with 1.5 km to go. It’s planned, reactive, and sometimes hilariously crazy.
In the Tour de France 2025, sprint timing, mountain climbing, and staying ahead of the breakaway riders are like combat in the real world. During sprint stages, you have to fight to keep your lead-out train together while getting through a group of competitors.
Measuring is very important on mountain stages like Mont Ventoux. The red bar gives you attack energy, the blue bar gives you endurance energy, and the blue gel is like cycling Gatorade. Too much pressure, too soon? You’ll hit it. Don’t save enough? There will be no more Pogačar in the distance.
The constant balancing act is what makes this system interesting. As you watch Pogačar surge ahead on the Ventoux stage, for example, you try not to get scared. You don’t answer right away; you wait to see if he’s bluffing or going all out. You keep a steady pace and follow Remco.
When the meters start to drop, you switch to blue gel. It’s not just numbers; you need to be patient and keep the rhythm. After the first 500 meters, the last 500 meters are a full-on battle where you use all of your energy to win. It’s more like chess on two wheels than pressing buttons.
The racing controls feel a lot better than in previous games. Because of the effort control system, going up and down feels more alive. You can switch between tempo levels and automate parts of the ride instead of holding down a button all the time. This lets you focus on positioning and drafting.
Still, the way AI acts can be annoying. Your riders sometimes forget that they need to lead you out. Sometimes, they sit in your wheel and let you pull like you’re running an Uber for bikes by yourself. When trying to catch a breakaway, it’s especially annoying because everyone is in the right place, but no one wants to pull. Even though it doesn’t change the game, it makes you want to yell, “WHY are you just sitting there, Jonas?!”
Tour de France 2025’s XP isn’t like most grindfests. Instead, performance boosts, being picked for a team, and rankings all have something to do with moving up in your career. When you finish stages, objectives, and goals, your rider’s stats go up, and they can take on better roles within their team or even move to a better squad.
There isn’t a lot of the same climb, but every choice you make—whether it’s helping a teammate, winning a sprint, or staying alive during a breakaway—adds to your legacy. It’s a subtle but smart way to get you to play more often without making you stick to grind mechanics.
Tour de France 2025 looks better than any other game in the series. The rendering distance has been greatly improved; you can now see hills, towns in the distance, and mountain silhouettes in ways that TDF 2022 could only dream of.
Tour de France 2025’s animations of the riders look smoother, and the different jerseys and kits are rendered more clearly. Sponsors and national flags also look their best. The winding climb up Mont Ventoux looks beautiful, and the cityscapes in sprint stages like Paris give a sense of place that earlier races really needed.
The peloton still looks a bit robotic up close, but it moves naturally enough. And that moment at the finish line? Seeing your rider raise their arms in victory while a flailing Pogačar struggles behind you is a satisfying sight.
The sound design in Tour de France 2025 is still simple but useful. There is a grounded feeling because of the noise of the tires on the asphalt, the wind blowing by on the downhills, and the grunts of riders struggling up the hills. Crowd noise builds up near the finish line or on famous climbs like Ventoux, making the last kilometer more exciting.
However, Tour de France 2025 still lacks impactful commentary and a lively soundtrack. You’ll mostly hear background noise and a few in-game cues here and there. It helps you get into the game, but don’t expect FIFA-level sound effects. The intensity is quieter, which, to be fair, is a lot like the real Tour.
Even though Tour de France 2025 doesn’t change the series completely, it finally feels like a polished, sure step forward. From making the climbing more responsive to improving the graphics, Cyanide Studio has taken small but important steps toward making a complete cycling simulator.
In a fun way, Tour de France 2025’s sprint finishes are chaotic. Mountain battles are tense and strategic, and even managing a team feels a little more natural. Still, there are some problems with it. AI is still sometimes annoyingly passive, and sound design is still pretty simple. You can juggle energy gels and watch Slovenian monsters go full beast mode, though, if you’ve ever wanted to feel like you’re really in the mind of a cycling strategist.
