It was held on 31 January 2021 as a category 1.1 race on the 2021 UCI Europe Tour and the first event of the 2021 French Road Cycling Cup.

The 171-kilometer route started and finished in Marseille and featured several climbs, notably the Route des Crêtes and the Col de la Gineste [fr] in the last 30 kilometers.

[1] Defending champion Benoît Cosnefroy of AG2R Citroën Team suffered a knee injury in training in mid-January and was forced to miss the race, but his teammate and French compatriot Aurélien Paret-Peintre won the race.

The peloton was reduced to a small group of around 30 riders at the finish, and in the ensuing bunch sprint, Paret-Peintre, not generally known for his sprinting prowess, narrowly beat sprinters Thomas Boudat and Bryan Coquard in a photo finish.

The only non-starter, Jonas Rutsch of EF Education–Nippo, was a late scratch after receiving a positive result from a routine COVID-19 test.