While many races have a low-key reveal of their route on their website or drip-feed it piecemeal in press releases as and when stages are inked in, the Tour de France does it differently.The biggest show in town as far as the cycling world is concerned unveils its routes for the following summer in a glitzy show in its Paris home.ASO, the organiser, invites the great and the good of the cycling world to Palais des Congrs (Paris Convention Centre) to see the route now routes, since the 2022 addition of the womens race, the Tour de France Femmes that race directors Christian Prudhomme and Marion Rousse have cooked up. The room is filled to see where the Tour goes next. A.S.O./Maxime Delobel This route presentation often feels like cycling out of context, with pro riders almost exclusively seen at races decked out in Lycra, helmet and sunglasses pitching up in Paris in their finery. Prudhomme and Rousse in conversation on stage. A.S.O./Etienne Coudret They will be quizzed on their initial thoughts about the announcement and will rarely offer up anything more than platitudes such as it looking like a tough route and it being a big fight for the yellow jersey. Prizes to those who can put names to the faces of these four out-of-context pro cyclists. A.S.O./Maxime Delobel The elephant in the room of all this show is that the route 'reveal' is often anything but.Firstly, the Grand Depart, which typically covers the opening three stages of the route, has already long since been officially revealed.For 2027, the Tour de France makes a much-anticipated return to Great Britain, after the phenomenally successful Yorkshire start of 2014. Valentin Paret-Peintre offers his thoughts on the 2026 route last year. A.S.O./Maxime Delobel Unofficially, the route has already been at least partially sometimes completely pieced together. The Tour de France is, of course, the biggest show of the cycling season and reporters, bloggers and fans don't sit around idly waiting for the route to be delivered on a plate.Local news may be struggling everywhere, but one thing it remains effective for is in revealing murmurings of local Tour de France hosting duties.These individual stories add up up to something greater than the sum of their parts and one man more responsible than most for building this jigsaw is Thomas Vergouwen of velowire.com, who has been on the Tour de France route beat for the past couple of decades.He uses a combination of open-source journalism, sifting through local French media, whove already announced that the Tour will be starting or finishing in X town, and more crafty enquiries to hotels to establish whether the behemoth of the Tour de France has block-booked them out for a particular day in July.Sometimes, his stitched-together route is indistinguishable from the real thing; while precise stage details are missing, the starts, finishes and rough shape of the route around France are often in place.2027 routes: what we know and what we think we know This week (Thursday at 10am UK time to be precise) the routes for the 2027 races will be shared by Prudhomme and Rousse.What we know for certain is that this is the first time that both mens and womens races have started in the same country, outside France, in the same year and will provide a spectacular six days of top-tier racing for British cycling fans in July and August.The mens race begins in Edinburgh on Friday 2 July with a 184km stage that crosses the border with England and finishes in Carlisle.Its followed up with a stage 2 that covers a huge amount of ground (223km), from Keswick through the hilly Lake District and Forest of Bowland before a flat finish in Liverpool. The Trough of Bowland is a regular fixture of British bike racing, included in the Milk Race, Tours of Britain and, shown here, the 1996 Tour of Lancashire. Graham Watson/Getty Images Stage 3, completing the trio of Great British nations, takes place entirely in Wales (Welshpool to Cardiff) and matches the distance of stage 2 (with more climbing thrown in for good measure).The nine-day womens race opens in Leeds on 30 July with an 85.7km stage that crosses the Yorkshire-Lancashire border into Manchester.Its followed up with arguably the hardest route across either Grand Depart and its smorgasbord of Peak District climbs between Manchester and Sheffield (154.4km). The Grand Depart finale is in London, where an 18km team time trial ends as in the Olympics road races in front of Buckingham Palace on The Mall.Thats where the officially unveiled stages end and the rumours begin. Given its long history, this happens far more extensively for the men's race than the women's.Rumours on Velowire include a return into France from Britain with a stage in Cherbourg (after a Monday rest day), Alpine summit finishes on Grand Colombier and Les Saisies, and Col de Portet at the end of the race in the Pyrenees.Elsewhere among the French press, there have been rumours since scotched but nobody knows for sure that the Montmartre climb of the final stage in Paris has been axed. Given its impact on the past couple of editions, that would be a mistake, on a sporting level at least. Col de Portet is a new Pyrenees climb that was introduced in 2018. Getty Images None of this is confirmed, but we don't have long to wait to find out for sure. The presentation can be viewed this Thursday from 10am UK time across the world on ASO's website, in the UK on HBO Max and TNT Sports, and across Europe on Eurosport.