The 2027 Santos Women’s Tour Down Under will run on the same day and across the same stages as the final three days of racing in the men’s event, with the decision to double up prompted by a request to shorten the length of time that the women’s World Teams are required to spend in Australia at the start of each season.
The men’s WorldTour opener is expected to run from January 19-24 with the three-stage Women’s WorldTour race then set to take place on January 22-24. The stages will start out around 90 minutes after the men roll out and cover the same distance and have the same start and finish lines.
“The challenge we were given by the UCI was to deliver a more condensed program of racing and optimise the time the women’s teams spent in Australia,” said race director Stuart O’Grady in a statement.
“We saw it as an opportunity to do something different and bring both men’s and women’s racing together and finish off with a bumper final weekend of racing.”
The women’s race has run before the men’s event in previous years, meaning the teams had to be away longer for fewer days of racing as they waited through the gap to the Women’s WorldTour ranked Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race, which this year was held on January 31, while the Women’s Tour Down Under finished on January 19, although there were two lower-ranked one-day UCI races between.
This extended stay, in particular, became an issue in 2026 as attendance at all but one Women’s WorldTour event each season became mandatory, meaning teams that may have chosen to miss out before were given little option but to turn up for the opening block of racing.
While running men’s and women’s events on the same day isn’t new, the Tour Down Under – which was a forerunner in offering equal prize money – said it will be the first major event to mirror the stages.
“Every year we’ve seen the level of women’s racing at the TDU progress and that will now extend to having the peloton riding longer stages, so I’m looking forward to seeing the atmosphere out on the roads for a huge final weekend of the Tour,” said assistant race director Carlee Taylor.
“It’s also a great platform to highlight the strength of our women’s peloton on a level we haven’t seen before, and the fact that we’re even able to do this reflects the growth and progression of women’s cycling.”
The early position in the season of the race and potential for high temperatures has been a consideration around course length through the history of the race but the rising level of the field, with all the Women’s WorldTour teams present for the first time in 2026, has already led to changes with the 394.6km event this year the longest yet.
Even then the men’s stages, excluding the prologue, were on average 11km longer, at 142km, than the women’s stages last year.
That is just over the average daily distance of 140km outlined as the maximum by the UCI for Women’s WorldTour stage races, with 160km being the maximum distance per stage for the women. There was just one stage in the men’s race in 2026 which exceeded this, the 169.8km finale.
The Tour Down Under said that details of the stages will be released in coming weeks.
