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The maillot vert is the only Tour de France jersey Pogačar has yet to win. ASO just changed the points rules to keep it that way — and let the sprinters shine.
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Pogačar led the green jersey race early during the 2025 and finished second overall. (Photo: Loic VENANCE / AFP)
Tadej Pogačar won yellow, won polka dots, and won four stages.
About the only thing he didn’t win in last year’s Tour de France was the green jersey.
Tour de France organizers appear determined to keep it that way.
Officials have quietly rewritten the rules for the green jersey battle, and it doesn’t take a detective to figure out why.
For 2026, the Tour has tweaked the scoring system to tilt the green jersey back toward the peloton’s brawny pure sprinters after King Pog came surprisingly close to taking that prize, too.
According to L’Équipe, winners of five designated sprint stages will earn 70 points instead of 50, while intermediate sprint bonuses rise from 20 to 25.
The timing is hard to ignore.
With Pogačar in full beast mode and chasing a record-tying fifth yellow jersey, ASO seems eager to keep at least one prize in the hands of the fast men.
In last year’s classics-style route, Pogačar finished second in the points classification behind Jonathan Milan — just 78 points back — beating pure sprinters like Biniam Girmay and Tim Merlier without really targeting the jersey.
Will the new rules be enough?
L’Équipe recalculated last year’s points under the new system, and Milan would have banked 80 additional points during the 2025 Tour. Pogačar? Only 19.
Plus, the biggest points hauls will come on five classic sprint stages finishing in Pau, Bordeaux, Bergerac, Nevers, and Chalon-sur-Saône.
Those are the days when Pogačar is usually content to roll home safely in the bunch while the sprinters fight for glory.
The points gap should be enough to keep the green jersey safely out of Pogačar’s reach.
Should be is the key phrase.
Milan and Pogačar shake hands during last year’s Tour. The Italian won green, but Pogačar finished his best ever in points. (Photo: LOIC VENANCE/AFP via Getty Images)
Whether you see this as anti-Pogačar or pro-sprinters probably depends on your point of view.
Either way, ASO appears eager to keep the green jersey within reach of its traditional owners.
That’s easier said than done.
Green is the only jersey missing in his growing collection.
Pogačar has never targeted green, but keeps bubbling up each year by simply winning so many stages and finishing within the top 10 in just about every key stage.
Since 2022, Pogačar has finished in the top 4 in the points competition every July.
He’s bagged three polka dots and won four white jerseys in a row until he eventually aged out of the young rider’s category.
He owns four yellow jerseys and enters this year’s race as the favorite to join Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault, and Miguel Indurain as an official five-time winner.
Only two riders have ever won yellow and green in the same year. Merckx pulled it off three times, and Hinault was the last in 1979.
Merckx — of course — is the only rider to win yellow, green, and polka dot jerseys in the same year in 1969 in the Tour’s ultimate podium sweep.
ASO seems determined to keep it that way.
Or perhaps Pogačar will simply view that as a new challenge.