The Athens Authentic Marathon will return on November 7 and 8 with a record 85,000 runners across six races and a renewed elite field that organizers hope can challenge the course records.
The 43rd edition culminates on Sunday morning with the 42.195-kilometer race from Marathon to the Panathenaic Stadium. The first wave will start at 8:30 a.m., half an hour earlier than in recent years, after the 10-kilometer race begins at 8 a.m. Saturday’s program includes two 1,200-meter races, a 5-kilometer race and the Universities Night Run.
The Hellenic Athletics Federation, SEGAS, says about 25,000 runners are entered in the marathon and another 17,000 in the 10-kilometer event. Total participation across the weekend is expected to exceed every previous edition, building on last year’s field of more than 70,000 runners.
Elite runners return to the Athens Marathon
The most significant sporting change is the return of a full elite field. SEGAS said ten men with personal bests below two hours and ten minutes and ten women under two hours and thirty minutes are expected to start alongside Greece’s leading marathoners.
Elite participation was suspended after 2019, returned for one year in 2023 and is now being restored as part of a longer plan to strengthen the event before 2030. That is the year Greece is expected to host the first World Marathon Championship.
The men’s course and event record is 2:10:34, set by Kenya’s Edwin Kiprop in 2023. Japan’s Mizuki Noguchi holds the women’s course record of 2:26:20 from the 2004 Olympic Games, while Rasa Drazdauskaite’s 2:33:51 from 2010 remains the event record for women.
SEGAS said the race currently carries World Athletics Elite label status and aims to move gradually toward the Gold and Platinum categories. The top man and woman will each receive $15,000, with prize money extending through eighth place.
The competitive upgrade follows a 2025 race won by Panagiotis Karaiskos and Matina Noula. It also restores an international element to a course that is as famous for its history as for its sustained climbs between the coast and Athens.
A weekend built around the original Greek route
The opening ceremony will take place at the Marathon Tomb at 12:30 p.m. Saturday, followed by the lighting of the Marathon Flame. The main race on Sunday follows Marathon Avenue and Mesogeion Avenue before reaching central Athens and finishing inside the marble Panathenaic Stadium.
That course links the modern event to the tradition of the messenger Pheidippides. The race also recalls Spyros Louis, the first Olympic marathon champion, who won in 1896, and athletes such as Zozo Christodoulou, the first Greek woman to complete the course in 1974.
The scale of the weekend will reshape traffic across eastern Attica and central Athens. Police said the marathon route will operate from 8:30 a.m. until 6:15 p.m. Sunday, with extensive rolling closures along Marathon Avenue, Mesogeion Avenue, Vasilissis Sofias Avenue and roads near the Panathenaic Stadium. Separate closures will cover Saturday’s shorter races and Sunday’s 10-kilometer event.
The expanded field, the return of elite athletes and the historic finish make the 43rd edition a larger test for organizers than the Athens Marathon’s recent editions. It will also show whether faster international competition can produce records on one of the sport’s most demanding and symbolic courses.
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