Paul Seixas arrives at the 2026 Liege-Bastogne-Liege as a genuine Monument dark horse, the young French climber carrying a Strade Bianche podium and four wins at the Tour of the Basque Country into his debut start at La Doyenne.
Seixas has ridden only one Monument before — Il Lombardia 2025, where he finished seventh on debut — but his 2026 season has been a sequence of statement rides that have catapulted him into the conversation alongside Remco Evenepoel and Tadej Pogacar.
The opening shock came at the Vuelta a la Region de Murcia in February, where Seixas won atop the Alto de Collado Bermejo, beating experienced climbers Juan Ayuso and Joao Almeida to become the youngest stage winner in the history of the race. A long-range solo win at La Faun-Ardeche followed, before Strade Bianche delivered the breakthrough — Seixas rode alongside Pogacar and UAE Team Emirates-XRG's Juan Ayuso deep into the finale on the Tuscan gravel.
At Strade Bianche, Seixas was one of the final riders to drop off Pogacar's wheel when the world champion attacked. He then rode with Isaac del Toro for most of the decisive break, before dispatching the young Mexican into the Piazza del Campo to take second behind Pogacar. Observers noted that Seixas had done most of the work on the final climb — a level of self-sufficiency that turned heads in the team cars.
His next target, the Tour of the Basque Country, turned into a full-team showcase. Seixas won the opening time trial, attacked to victory on stage two, and added a dominating stage-five win to sweep all four classifications. It was the kind of performance that flips a rider from "promising young climber" into "Monument candidate."
What Liege brings to Seixas is a different kind of challenge. The 260 kilometres of rolling Ardennes climbs will punish a rider who has not yet raced that distance in full World Tour intensity. He has, however, already proven he can finish a long, hilly Classic near the front: he took third at the 2025 European road championships on a course that one preview described as "somewhat similar to what we have in Liege."
A Seixas victory would not make him the youngest-ever Liege-Bastogne-Liege winner, but it would make him the third youngest in history. More importantly, it would confirm what many in the peloton already suspect: the French teenager is the successor his country has been waiting for, and his Monument era is starting now, not later.
