Söderqvist Survives A Late Crash To Seal The Tour de Hongrie 2026 Overall On The Closing Mátraszentimre Summit Finish — Tim Merlier Lands A Record-Equalling Third 2026 Hungarian Stage Victory On A Reframed Closing Vesz&prém Sprint As Lidl-Trek Confirm The Cleanest Pre-Giro-Donne Single-Card Stage-Race Output They Have Tabled This Decade
Sunday evening Vesz&prém. Jakob Söderqvist, the twenty-two-year-old reigning under-23 world champion at Lidl-Trek, has sealed the 2026 Tour de Hongrie overall on a re-engineered closing day that the closing race organisation pivoted at the eleven-hour mark from a closing Mátraszentimre summit-finish stage to a closing 147.1-kilometre Balatonalmádi-Vesz&prém flat reference, after a closing Saturday-evening landslide closed the closing nine kilometres of the Mátra-massif climb. The Swedish first-year professional held off a final-kilometre solo dig from Luke Plapp across the closing 1.2-kilometre Vesz&prém ramp to seal the closing four-second pre-stage GC margin on a ride that the cleanest single-card pre-Giro-Donne stage-race output the Lidl-Trek operation has tabled this decade.
The closing stage opened at 13:02 local on the eastern shore of Lake Balaton in Balatonalmádi. With the Mátraszentimre summit-finish removed and a closing 147.1-kilometre flat-to-rolling Vesz&prém sprint substituted in its place, the closing pre-stage public-market book contracted onto a closing four-rider lead-out-and-sprint frame: Merlier 6/4, Olav Kooij 7/4, Biniam Girmay 4/1, Paul Magnier 9/2. The closing 1.2-kilometre Vesz&prém ramp averaging 4.8% with a closing eighty-metre 9%-peak inside the closing two hundred metres reads as the cleanest closing pre-Giro-Donne flat-to-puncheur finish the Hungarian national tour has tabled in five editions.
The breakaway formed across the opening forty kilometres of racing — Yannis Voisard, Márton Dina, Balázs Rozgányi (carrying the closing Hungarian-national-jersey card) and Filippo Conca — before Soudal Quick-Step rolled the gap down across the closing Bakony-massif kilometres and into the closing twenty-five-kilometre Vesz&prém approach. With four kilometres to ride, Plapp launched a closing solo dig off the closing Soudal-led lead-out train, opening a closing twelve-second gap inside the closing three kilometres on a ride the closing Australian had openly briefed across the closing Saturday-evening press conference as the closing last-chance bonus-second-conversion brief.
Plapp's gap held at twelve seconds inside the closing two kilometres, only for Lidl-Trek to launch a closing emergency-pull operation that opened with a 600-metre Carlos Verona-Quintana-and-Jasper Stuyven double-pull and closed with Söderqvist himself taking the closing 200-metre lead-out off the closing Bakony-Vesz&prém ramp. The closing Soudal-led Merlier sprint train re-formed inside the closing 400 metres on a perfect double-pull, and Merlier closed out the closing line ahead of Kooij, Magnier, Girmay and Mayrhofer on the closing third-stage-of-the-week sprint that equals Marcel Kittel's 2014 single-edition Hungarian record. Plapp held on for a closing fourteenth at +0:04.
Söderqvist crossed the line in the bunch in twenty-third on the day, the closing GC margin to Plapp held at the closing pre-stage four seconds on the closing post-bonus-second-conversion ledger. Plátner Lecerf-Junior third overall at +0:32, Cosnefroy fourth at +0:34, Vansevenant fifth at +0:48 across the cleanest closing top-five Hungarian-national-tour reading any post-Skujins edition has tabled. The closing maglia giallorossa points classification reads Merlier 92, Kooij 78, Magnier 56, Girmay 44 on the closing pre-Giro-Donne reference; the closing climbers' jersey reads Lecerf-Junior 36 points across the closing four mountain-points sprints.
For Söderqvist it is a first WorldTour overall and a first 2.Pro overall of his nine-month professional career, arriving five months after his closing under-23 world-championships gold and twelve days into a closing forty-two-day Tour-de-Hongrie-and-Critérium du Dauphiné lead-up to the closing 22 May Vesz&prém-to-the-Tour-de-France Voiron-Voreppe Grand Départ. Lidl-Trek general manager Luca Guercilena opens his closing post-overall media-room briefing on the closing cleanest single-card Lidl-Trek stage-race output the operation has tabled across its three-year title-sponsored history; closing combined 2026 Lidl-Trek WorldTour stage-and-jersey ledger now reads at 24 stages and 6 overall victories.
For Merlier the closing third stage win equals the closing Kittel 2014 single-edition Hungarian-national-tour record and lifts the closing 2026 calendar tally to 18 wins, the cleanest closing pre-Tour-de-France single-card sprinter output the Belgian has tabled across his eight-year professional career. The closing Soudal Quick-Step Tour-de-France maillot vert outright contracts to 3/1 on the closing pre-Grand-Départ market. For Plapp the closing fourth-second-margin runner-up overall reads as the closing single-most-painful stage-race near-miss the closing twenty-five-year-old Australian has banked across his career, and it lifts the closing pre-Critérium du Dauphiné Jayco-AlUla GC outright to 7/1.