Individual overall race: Yellow Jersey

The yellow jersey, or maillot jaune, stands above all else, as it designates the rider who leads the General Classification. After each stage, officials calculate who has the fastest time across the entire race. The jersey then goes to the overall leader, who gets to wear it in the following stage.

Individual points race: Green Jersey

The green jersey goes to the leader of the Points Classification. Riders can earn these points at intermediate sprints that come mid-stage. The amount of points given depends on the day’s stage profile.

Individual overall classification among first-year juniors: Blue Jersey

The blue jersey goes to the General Classification leader who is first-year juniors. Put simply, it goes to the best young rider with the lowest overall time.

Best Hungarian Rider Jersey

The jersey, which is blue on a white background and bears the flag of Hungary, can be worn by the Hungarian cyclists who are the best of the own nation in the General Classification.

After the second Tour de France, the rules were changed, and the General Classification was no longer calculated by time, but by points. This points system was kept until 1912, after which it changed back into the time classification. At that time, the leader still did not wear a yellow jersey.

There is doubt over when the yellow jersey began. The Belgian rider Philippe Thys, who won the Tour in 1913, 1914 and 1920, recalled in the Belgian magazine Champions et Vedettes when he was 67 that he was awarded a yellow jersey in 1913 when the organiser, Henri Desgrange, asked him to wear a coloured jersey. Thys declined, saying making himself more visible in yellow would encourage other riders to ride against him.

According to the official history, the first yellow jersey was worn by the Frenchman Eugène Christophe in the stage from Grenoble to Geneva on July 19, 1919. The colour was chosen either to reflect the yellow newsprint of the organising newspaper, L’Auto.