Tour de France riders sleep on balconies and battle power cuts as heatwave exposes shoddy race hotels

Balcony bedsheets and spiderwebs

The first rest day of the 2026 Tour de France, Monday 13 July, was supposed to be about recovery ahead of a hard stage ten in the Massif Central. For several teams, it became a night of improvisation. Uno-X Mobility twins Anders and Tobias Halland Johannessen posted an Instagram video showing them dragging their mattresses onto a balcony, sleeping outside with eyemasks, after finding their hotel room near the summit of Le Lioran dirty, un-airconditioned, and laced with dozens of spiderwebs. "On improvise, on s'adapte et on surmonte," Tobias Johannessen commented on his account. Anders rated the sleep "7/7" the next morning.

Their teammate, Danish champion Magnus Cort, known for his long-running Instagram hotel reviews under the hashtag #RoomsAndRatings, was blunt.

It has an amazing view and looks pretty good on the outside. But in reality, it is amongst the worst places I have stayed. It wasn't completely soaked this time and only a small smell of rot. We also had the luxury of dry toilet paper. It was dirty, no air-conditioning and no WiFi. Even though it was better than last time it will still only get 1 out of 7 stars.

Two other squads, Picnic-PostNL and Mathieu van der Poel's Alpecin-Premier Tech, were staying at the same hotel. Alpecin's Silvan Dillier also slept outside after finding the team's own portable air-conditioning too noisy. All three teams were disturbed by noise from hundreds of spectators who had descended on the town for Tuesday's summit finish.

How hotel allocation works

Accommodation on the Tour is assigned by organiser Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), not by the teams themselves. The system aims to balance treatment across all squads over the three weeks, distributing hotels of varying standards depending on what is available in each region's start or finish town. According to Le Parisien, the hotel at the centre of the Uno-X complaints was a residence specially opened for the Tour's passage. Christian Prudhomme, the Tour's director, defended the arrangements in remarks to ICI Pays d'Auvergne.

Si on veut arriver dans cette si belle France qui offre de si belles étapes, il n'y a pas des hôtels cinq étoiles partout.

The Pogacar power-cut story

A separate controversy erupted around yellow-jersey holder Tadej Pogacar and his UAE Team Emirates-XRG squad. Spanish journalist Carlos Arribas of El Pais reported on X that the team's hotel, the 3-star Beauséjour in Vic-sur-Cère (Cantal), had no air-conditioning and that whenever the squad's portable units were plugged in, the electricity tripped. The post went viral.

Le Parisien visited the hotel and found a narrower version of events. The Beauséjour, which also hosted Lidl-Trek, does not have built-in air-conditioning, a fact communicated to UAE in advance. The team arrived with roughly ten portable units of its own. The power cut, confirmed by hotel owner Vincent, was caused by the team's refrigerated truck drawing too much current on 12 July. "I had respected the specifications on amperage but the teams' equipment is more and more energy-hungry," Vincent told Le Parisien. The outage lasted between ten and twenty minutes while he repaired the system and increased the amperage. UAE management told the paper: "The hotel managers were very nice to us. There is zero controversy, everyone slept well." The team also uses special cooling mattress covers worth around 3,000 euros, according to Franceinfo.

Cort's star-rating becomes a sport

Magnus Cort's detailed hotel reviews have become a cult fixture of the Tour, with the Danish rider assigning scores across precise criteria in a Guide du Routard style. His verdict on the Le Lioran lodging, awarding a single star out of seven, was the harshest of the race so far. Tom Pidcock's Pinarello-Q 36.5 squad also labelled their own hotel "rotten," according to Franceinfo, confirming that grumbling about lodgings is a peloton tradition. In contrast, Decathlon CMA CGM Team showcased its own recovery system, transporting personalised mattresses and adjustable pillows from hotel to hotel so riders benefit from the same sleep environment regardless of the accommodation.

Heatwave pressures and what comes next

The accommodation troubles unfolded during an extreme heat episode, with temperatures in central France exceeding 35 degrees Celsius and approaching 40 degrees in some areas. The Auvergne region was placed on red alert. The ninth stage, won by Mathieu van der Poel ahead of Tobias Johannessen, had already been shortened by 30 kilometres because of the heat. The Tour continues through the Massif Central before heading towards the Alps, with the peloton facing more remote mountain towns where five-star hotels remain scarce. Prudhomme's organisation has not indicated any changes to the allocation system, and teams with bigger budgets, such as UAE and Decathlon, are likely to keep leaning on portable infrastructure to close the comfort gap.