Barcelona school cycling program grows into a citywide habit

Barcelona’s school cycling push has moved beyond a pilot feel and into civic routine. Ja Pedalo closed its first edition with 1,349 third-grade pupils from 37 schools taking part in sessions at the Velòdrom Municipal d’Horta Miquel Poblet, a tally that shows how far the city has pushed cycling beyond club sport and into the school day.

The program was designed to teach children to ride a bike or sharpen existing skills, but the city has framed it as something larger: confidence, coordination and active mobility in an urban setting where children increasingly need to move with ease and safety. By placing the classes at the municipal velodrome in Horta, Barcelona gave the project a public, performance-minded home instead of treating bike education as a side activity.

That first edition ran from 14 October 2025 to 9 June 2026, and the city originally pitched it as an academic-year initiative for up to 3,000 third-grade students. A June 2025 announcement said more than 100 school groups would take part over the course of the year, so the final count of 1,349 pupils gives a clear measure of uptake against the original ambition.

The numbers matter because they speak to the conditions parents usually care about most: whether a cycling program feels safe, whether schools actually sign up, and whether a child can carry the habit outside the classroom. Barcelona has described the Velòdrom Municipal d’Horta Miquel Poblet as a public reference venue for cycling in the city, and that matters for families who want children to see biking as normal, repeatable and local, not exceptional.

The city also tied Ja Pedalo to the legacy of the 2026 Tour de France Grand Départ, using that high-profile moment to widen the appeal of cycling across schools and families. It is one part of a broader set of Grand Départ-related cycling promotions, which suggests Barcelona is trying to build a ladder from introductory lessons to safer city riding and broader participation in active transport.

For the city’s sports and education planners, the first edition offers a useful signal: cycling habits are easier to build when they are repeated in familiar public infrastructure, supported by schools and connected to daily mobility. Ja Pedalo now reads less like a one-off project and more like the start of a longer effort to make cycling part of childhood in Barcelona.