The 1929 Tour de France was the 23rd edition of the Tour de France, taking place from 30 June to 28 July. It consisted of 22 stages over 5,286 km (3,285 mi).

Nicolas Frantz had won two consecutive Tours, in 1927 and 1928, and was looking for a third. In addition the 1926 Tour winner, Lucien Buysse, was looking for another title.

Victor Fontan, leader of the general classification and therefore wearer of the yellow jersey, crashed in the Pyrenees during stage 10, breaking the forks to his bicycle. At that time, a rule stated that a rider must finish a stage with the bike he started it with. Fontan went house to house, looking for a bike to borrow. He eventually found one and rode 145 km to the finish line, with his broken bike strapped to his back. At the end of the day Fontan quit the race in tears. The rule was removed for the 1930 Tour de France.

The Tour was won by Belgian Maurice De Waele, although he was sick during the race. The Tour organisation was not content with the outcome of the race, because the strongest team Alycon had been able to deliver the winner even though he was sick, so they changed the rules after the 1929 Tour de France, and for the next years there were no sponsored teams but only national or regional teams.

In 1928, many stages were in the team-time-trial format, where the teams started separately. The Tour organisation had invented this rule to make the flat stages more competitive, but it had the effect that the public stopped following the race. Therefore, in 1929 the most stages were run in the normal format, except for stages 12, 19 and 20, the stages that were expected to be raced slower than 30 km/h.>

The entire podium in 1928 was occupied by members from the Alcyon cycling team. The tour organisation wanted the Tour to be an individual race, so in 1929 the teams were officially not there, and riders started in the A-category (professional cyclists) or as touriste-routiers (semi-professional or amateur).

In 1928, cyclist could be helped when they had a flat tire; in 1929 this rule was reversed, and cyclists had to fix their flat tires by themselves.

In the first stages, the cyclists remained close to each other. Aimé Dossche won the first stage, and kept the lead for the next two stages. In the fourth stage, Maurice De Waele and Louis De Lannoy escaped from the bunch. De Lannoy won the stage, while Dewaele took over the lead in the general classification.