Africa's First Marathon Major: Cape Town Joins the Abbott Eight

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July 15, 2026

Confirmed 10 June 2026

Africa's First Marathon Major

The Sanlam Cape Town Marathon has been admitted to the Abbott World Marathon Majors as the eighth member of the series and the first on the African continent, and it will run for the first time under that badge next May. Here is how it got there, and how it measures up against Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago, New York, Tokyo and Sydney.

First race as a Major Sunday 23 May 2027 Green Point, Cape Town · fourth in the Majors calendar, between London and Sydney

8thMajor in the series

1stIn Africa

27,000Marathon runners, 2026

2:04:55Course record, 2026

Updated: 15 July 2026

Photo: Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0

The Abbott World Marathon Majors ran for its first two decades across six cities on three continents, none of them African, in a sport whose podiums have been dominated by African runners for most of that period. That changed on 10 June 2026, when the Sanlam Cape Town Marathon passed the second and final stage of its assessment and was admitted to the series. It becomes the eighth Major, and the first staged in Africa, when it runs on 23 May 2027. Getting there took 32 years, three assessment attempts and one cancelled race, and the result says less about Cape Town's size than about its operations. This is what the numbers show.

What Happened

The Abbott World Marathon Majors is not a ranking of the world's best marathons but a closed series, and it admits new members only after a multi-year audit covering the course, the expo, elite recruitment, operations and safety standards. Cape Town entered that process as a candidate race in 2021, and because the criteria require two consecutive passing assessments, it spent five years working towards a result that could be delivered in two.

Pass one: 2024

Assessed for the third time in October 2024, the race met every criterion, clearing stage one. One further consecutive pass would be enough to complete the candidacy.

The 2025 setback

The 19 October 2025 race was cancelled roughly 90 minutes before the start after overnight wind damaged the race village. With no race, there was no stage two to assess, and the candidacy slipped by a year.

Pass two: 2026

The rescheduled race ran on 24 May 2026 in settled conditions with 27,000 marathon entrants, and it passed the second assessment. Membership was confirmed on 10 June 2026.

Key takeaway: Cape Town did not join the Majors on the strength of its field, which is the smallest of the eight, but by clearing an operational audit in two consecutive years. That is what the criteria measure, and it is a useful corrective to the assumption that the series simply admits the biggest races.

"This is a moment generations of African runners have waited for, and it belongs to everyone who carried us here." Clark Gardner · CEO, Sanlam Cape Town Marathon

The Eight, Mapped

With Cape Town admitted, the series reaches five continents. The race takes the fourth slot in the calendar, between London in April and Sydney in August, and fills the one month the series had never used. The Majors now run in every month from March to November except June and July. Tap any pin for the detail.

Pins mark each race's finish area, not its start. Boston, Sydney and Cape Town all run point-to-point or loop courses whose start lies some distance away. Shanghai is shown as a candidate, not a Major. Basemap © OpenStreetMap contributors.

The gap that closed: until 2025 every Major was in the northern hemisphere, and Sydney's admission that year changed the first half of that. Cape Town changes the rest, so that two of the eight now sit south of the equator and the series finally has a race in the region that supplies most of its winners.

How Cape Town Compares

The eight Majors, side by side

Tip: Rotate to landscape for best view.

Race	First run	Joined	Status	Field (latest)	2027 slot
Boston Hopkinton to Boylston St	1897	2006	Original six	30,000 2026 entrant cap	April
New York City Staten Island to Central Park	1970	2006	Original six	59,226 2025 finishers	November
Berlin Brandenburg Gate	1974	2006	Original six	54,280 2024 finishers	September
Chicago Grant Park loop	1977	2006	Original six	54,351 2025 finishers	October
London Blackheath to The Mall	1981	2006	Original six	56,640 2025 finishers	April
Cape Town Green Point loop	1994	2027	Eighth · Africa's first	27,000 2026 marathon entrants	23 May
Sydney North Sydney to Opera House	2000	2025	Seventh	32,959 2025 finishers	August
Tokyo Metro Gov't Bldg to Tokyo Station	2007	2013	Original six	37,480 2025 participants	March
Shanghai Candidate race	1996	2027?	Pending	–	December

Boston

Original six · April

1897

Joined

2006

Field

30,000

Basis

Cap

New York City

Original six · November

1970

Joined

2006

Field

59,226

Basis

Finishers

Berlin

Original six · September

1974

Joined

2006

Field

54,280

Basis

Finishers

Chicago

Original six · October

1977

Joined

2006

Field

54,351

Basis

Finishers

London

Original six · April

1981

Joined

2006

Field

56,640

Basis

Finishers

Cape Town

Africa's first · 23 May

1994

Joins

2027

Field

27,000

Basis

Entrants

Sydney

Seventh · August

2000

Joined

2025

Field

32,959

Basis

Finishers

Tokyo

Original six · March

2007

Joined

2013

Field

37,480

Basis

Participants

"Original six" denotes the races eligible for the Six Star medal, which Abbott has committed to keeping unchanged. Tokyo is one of the six despite joining in 2013. Sydney and Cape Town are not, and will instead feed the planned Nine Star medal.

Cape Town enters as the smallest Major

Most recent published edition for each race. Basis differs by race and is labelled, because the Majors do not report field size the same way.

Uniform scale: 1,000 runners = 7.6667 px. New York, London, Chicago, Berlin and Sydney figures are finishers. Boston is a published entrant cap and Cape Town is marathon entrants, both of which sit above the eventual finisher count, so the true gap at the bottom of this chart is slightly wider than drawn. Tokyo is marathon participants. Cape Town's 27,000 covers the marathon only; a further 17,500 ran the 10 km and 5 km Peace Runs and the trail races on the Saturday, for a combined weekend field of 44,500.

On the numbers, Cape Town's marathon field is roughly 46% the size of New York's, and that appears to be a choice rather than a constraint. Organisers raised it from 24,000 to 27,000 for 2026 and described the increase as a measured one intended to protect the participant experience, even though the ballot was substantially oversubscribed at that number.

The 32-Year Climb

The race that entered the Majors is not really the race that started in 1994, having changed organiser, sponsor, start line and calendar slot along the way. What carried through was the name, a good deal of the course, and an honour roll that turns out to be more interesting than the race's size would suggest.

From a club race in Pinelands to Africa's first Major

Milestones on the Cape Town Marathon's route into the Abbott series.

Spacing here is ordinal, not proportional. The gap between 1994 and 2007 was thirteen years; the gap between 2024 and 2026 was two. The chart shows sequence only, which is what matters for the candidacy. The 1994 race started and finished in Pinelands, not Green Point, and was organised by the Celtic Harriers club.

The Thugwane footnote

The 1996 Cape Town Marathon was won by Josia Thugwane, who went on later that year to win the Olympic marathon in Atlanta and become the first Black South African to take Olympic gold. For three decades that result sat in the records of a small club race, and it now appears on the honour roll of a World Marathon Major.

The 2026 Race

The 2026 edition ran on Sunday 24 May from Green Point, the 32nd staging by the organisers' count. It needed to be operationally sound to satisfy the assessors, and it was, but it also produced the fastest marathon ever run in Africa, which was not a requirement of the criteria and did the candidacy no harm at all.

Men: Mohamed Esa, 2:04:55

The Ethiopian took more than three minutes off the course record and set an African all-comers' record in the process. A four-man group came through halfway in 1:02:49, Esa made his move at 40 km, and he held on to win by four seconds from his compatriot Yihunilign Adane, with Kenya's Kalipus Lomwai third in 2:05:06.

It is worth noting for context that Esa had failed to finish Boston barely a month earlier, which is a reminder of how much marathon results depend on the day.

Women: Dera Dida, 2:23:18

Ethiopia took all three podium places. Dida moved clear inside the closing kilometres to win by 27 seconds from Mestawut Fikir, with Waganesh Mekasha Amare third in 2:23:57, having passed halfway together in 1:12:33.

Her winning time did not break the course record, which still belongs to Glenrose Xaba. Xaba's 2:22:22 from 2024 remains both a South African record and the fastest women's marathon run on African soil.

Kipchoge, 2:13:29

Cape Town was the opening leg of Eliud Kipchoge's World Tour, a project to run seven marathons across seven continents. At 41, and having completed his Six Star journey in New York in 2025, he finished in 2:13:29 in what was his first marathon on African soil. The second leg took him to Porto Alegre, Brazil, on 12 July.

"I'm proud to begin our world tour in Africa and to run my first-ever marathon on home soil." Eliud Kipchoge · Cape Town, 24 May 2026

Nineteen Years of Winning Times

The candidacy criteria include the standard of elite athlete a race is able to recruit, and recruitment tends to follow prize money, labels and prestige. Cape Town's winning times over the modern era track that progression closely enough to serve as a rough proxy for it.

Winning times at Cape Town, 2007 to 2026

Modern era of the race, from the 2007 relaunch at Green Point. 2020 was cancelled for the pandemic; 2025 was cancelled for wind.

Men's winner Women's winner No race held

Uniform scale: 1 minute = 4.3333 px on the vertical, 1 year = 31.0526 px on the horizontal. Both axes are linear and unbroken. The men's winning time fell 9 minutes 51 seconds between 2007 and 2026; the women's fell 18 minutes 12 seconds. The two lines converge because the women's field improved faster. The 2013 men's figure is Paul Manawa's, after the original winner was stripped of the title in 2014 for a failed steroid test. Lines are drawn between consecutive editions, so the segments spanning 2020 and 2025 cover two calendar years rather than one.

The inflection is 2014, the year the race became the Sanlam Cape Town Marathon under a new title partnership. The men's winning time fell from 2:17:51 to 2:10:41 in a single edition and has not been above 2:11:30 since, while the women's fell from 2:42:46 to 2:30:56. The sequence that follows is a familiar one in road running: sponsorship funds elite recruitment, stronger fields support a higher label, and the label is one of the things the Majors assessment looks at.

The Course

The race starts and finishes in Green Point, beside the Cape Town Stadium, and has long been marketed on being flat and fast. Esa's 2:04:55 is the strongest evidence so far that the description is accurate rather than promotional.

Flat, and genuinely so

Sydney carries the most elevation of the Majors, and Boston and New York are both genuinely hilly, whereas Cape Town's route is not. That is part of why the 2026 elite field was assembled as it was, with thirteen men who had already run faster than the old course record.

Autumn, not spring

The move to late May put the race in Cape Town's autumn, where highs of 20 to 22 °C and stable conditions are the norm. It also lands outside the Western Cape's peak tourism season, which is part of the economic argument.

The Sea Point loop

Runners know the late stretch along the promenade as the "loop of death", because it pulls them away from a finish that is already in sight. The race's CEO reached for it as a metaphor when describing the 2025 cancellation.

Wind is the main structural risk

The 2025 cancellation is better understood as a structural risk than as bad luck, since both the summer south-easter and the winter north-wester are capable of damaging a race village, and one of them did. No other Major has lost an edition to wind. Major status does not change the meteorology, and a late-May date sits within the Western Cape's storm season, as the eight-day system in May 2026 showed.

What Major Status Means

What Cape Town gains

Guaranteed international field. International participation was already growing before the badge. Organisers put the direct economic contribution from international runners at R800 million to the Western Cape.
Off-season timing. A May date brings that money in outside the peak tourism window, when the province needs it most.
Elite recruitment. Majors attract the deepest fields by default. The 2026 race already had eight men with 2:05 or faster on their record.
A star on the map. Runners chasing the planned Nine Star medal now have to come to Africa. There is no substitute race.
Provisional stars upgraded. Everyone who finished in 2026 received a provisional star, which Abbott confirmed would be fully recognised on a pass.

What it costs, and what it does not fix

Entry gets harder. 2026 was the first year with a ballot, and it was heavily oversubscribed. Expect London's odds, not a club race's.
No Six Star access. Cape Town is not one of the original six. Six Star chasers have no reason to come. The Nine Star medal is the draw, and it does not exist yet.
The Nine Star depends on Shanghai. Cape Town's headline reward is contingent on a race 12,000 km away passing its own audit in December.
Weather risk is unchanged. A Major that cancels is a bigger story than a club race that cancels.
Growth is capped by choice. At 27,000 the race stays the smallest Major, which limits the economic ceiling it just argued for.

The Assessment

Biggest

New York City

59,226 finishers in 2025, a world record for the distance

Hardest to enter

London

1,133,813 ballot applications for 2026

Newest

Cape Town

Eighth Major, first in Africa, from 23 May 2027

Cape Town joins as the smallest Major by field, and it does so without access to the Six Star medal that drives a good deal of Majors tourism. What it offers instead is the only Major on the continent that has supplied most of the sport's recent champions, an autumn slot no other race wants, a course that has now produced a 2:04:55, and a Nine Star medal that depends on Shanghai. The status is settled; the commercial case is not, and the first real test of it comes on 23 May 2027.

Where the Numbers Disagree

Six figures in this piece are reported differently by different reputable sources, and rather than pick one quietly, we have set out each disagreement and said which value we used.

Open discrepancies, stated plainly

The old men's course record: 2:08:15 or 2:08:16? Wikipedia's infobox and results table give Abdisa Tola 2:08:15 for 2024. World Athletics and the race organisers both used 2:08:16 in their 2026 coverage. One second. We have used 2:08:15 in the chart because it comes from the results table, and quoted "more than three minutes" for the improvement, which is true either way.
How many editions has this race had? The organisers call 2026 the 32nd edition, counting continuously from the 1994 Celtic Harriers race. Wikipedia numbers the modern race from the 2007 relaunch and has 2024 as the 17th. Both are defensible. They describe different races.
Chicago 2025 finishers: 54,351 or 54,208? Two results aggregators disagree by 143. We have used 54,351. The gap does not change the ranking.
Sydney 2025 finishers: 32,959, 32,967, 32,984 or "33,000"? Four figures across the race's own site, Wikipedia and two data write-ups. We have used 32,959. Race organisers round to 33,000.
Sydney's founding year: 2000 or 2001? The race first ran on 30 April 2000 as "The Host City Marathon", an Olympic test event, and has run every year since. Sources that say 2001 are dating it from when it took the Sydney Marathon name. We have used 2000.
Cape Town's World Athletics label. The race has been described for years as Africa's only Gold Label marathon. World Athletics' own report on the 2026 race called it an Elite Label road race. We have not resolved this and have avoided leaning on the label.

Why this section exists: field-size comparisons between marathons are unusually unreliable, because races report entrants, starters, participants and finishers interchangeably and there is a natural incentive to quote whichever figure is largest. The bar chart above therefore labels the basis for every race, and the labels matter as much as the bars.

What Comes Next

Cape Town confirmed as Africa's first Major

10 Jun 2026

AbbottWMM confirms the Sanlam Cape Town Marathon joins the series in 2027 as the eighth member. All 2026 finishers' provisional stars to be upgraded in the following weeks.

Source: Abbott World Marathon Majors

Shanghai decides the Nine Star medal

6 Dec 2026

The third candidate race needs a second pass when it runs on 6 December 2026 to join as the ninth Major. Cape Town's Nine Star payoff depends on it. Shanghai replaced Chengdu as China's candidate in 2024.

Source: Abbott World Marathon Majors

First race as a Major: 23 May 2027

23 May 2027

Cape Town takes the fourth slot in the Majors calendar, between London in April and Sydney in August. Expect a ballot, and expect it to be oversubscribed by a wider margin than 2026.

Source: Sanlam Cape Town Marathon

Kipchoge's World Tour rolls on

12 Jul 2026

Cape Town was leg one of seven marathons across seven continents. Leg two was Porto Alegre, Brazil, on 12 July. Each stop raises funds for the Eliud Kipchoge Foundation.

Source: World Athletics

If You Want to Run It in 2027

The ballot is now the main door. 2026 was the first ballot year and it was heavily oversubscribed. 2027 will be worse. Watch the race site from roughly September 2026.
Official tour operators guarantee entry. This is how most international runners get into any Major without lottery luck. You pay a premium for the package.
Book accommodation before the bib. Green Point, the V&A Waterfront and Sea Point compress hard on marathon weekend, and Major status will make that worse.
It is autumn, not summer. Late May in Cape Town means roughly 20 to 22 °C highs and a real chance of rain. Pack accordingly and do not assume African heat.
The weekend is bigger than the marathon. The 10 km and 5 km Peace Runs and the trail races run on the Saturday. In 2026 they carried 17,500 of the 44,500 total participants.
Age 40 or over? Cape Town hosted the 2026 AbbottWMM Age Group World Championships. The age-group rankings system draws from more than 350 qualifying races worldwide.
Train for a flat course. Cape Town is not Sydney. There is no Harbour Bridge and no Heartbreak Hill. There is a promenade at 32 km when you would rather be finished.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the Cape Town Marathon a World Marathon Major now?

Yes, from 2027. AbbottWMM confirmed on 10 June 2026 that Cape Town joins the series as the eighth member, and its first race as a Major is 23 May 2027. The 2026 race was not run as a Major, but all its finishers received a provisional star that has since been upgraded.

Does running Cape Town count towards the Six Star medal?

No. Abbott has committed to keeping the Six Star medal for the original six only: Tokyo, Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago and New York. Sydney and Cape Town do not count towards it. A Nine Star medal is planned instead, and would begin no earlier than 2027, contingent on Shanghai passing its own second evaluation on 6 December 2026.

Why did it take Cape Town so long?

Cape Town was named a candidate in 2021 and formal evaluation began in 2022. It needed to meet the criteria for three years, then pass two consecutive assessments. It failed the first two assessments, passed on the third in October 2024, and then lost its 2025 stage-two attempt entirely when the race was cancelled 90 minutes before the start because of overnight wind damage to the race village. The bid slipped to 2026.

How fast is the Cape Town course?

Fast, and now provably so. Mohamed Esa ran 2:04:55 in 2026, an African all-comers' record and more than three minutes inside the previous course record of 2:08:15 set by Abdisa Tola in 2024. The women's record is Glenrose Xaba's 2:22:22 from 2024, which is also the fastest women's marathon run on African soil.

Is Cape Town the biggest marathon in Africa?

By marathon field, the 2026 race had 27,000 runners, with a combined weekend field of 44,500 across the marathon, Peace Runs and trail races. Organisers describe that as one of the largest running events on the continent. Note that South Africa's Comrades Marathon and the Two Oceans ultra are longer than 42.2 km and are not standard-distance marathons, so they are not comparable on this measure.

How do I get in for 2027?

Via the public ballot, which opened in November for the 2026 edition and was significantly oversubscribed, or via an official tour operator package with a guaranteed entry. Elite and qualifying routes exist for faster runners. Watch capetownmarathon.com from around September 2026.

What happens to the Six Star medal now there are eight Majors?

Nothing. Abbott has stated repeatedly that the Six Star programme remains unchanged and the Six Star medal will continue to be awarded even once a Nine Star medal exists. This is the single most misreported detail of the whole expansion.

Sources & References

The decision

Abbott World Marathon Majors, "Sanlam Cape Town Marathon becomes a Major", worldmarathonmajors.com
Abbott World Marathon Majors, "Cape Town 2026 finishers will receive provisional star"
Sanlam Cape Town Marathon, capetownmarathon.com, including "Road to Africa's 1st Major Continues: Taking Stock for 2026" (30 January 2026)

Race results and elite fields

World Athletics, "Esa and Dida win in Cape Town as Kipchoge kicks off World Tour", worldathletics.org
Sanlam Cape Town Marathon, "World Class Field Promises Record Times at 2026 Sanlam Cape Town Marathon" (21 May 2026)

Comparative field data

Athletics Weekly and New York Road Runners on the 2025 TCS New York City Marathon finisher record (59,226)
London Marathon Events on 2025 finishers (56,640) and the 2026 ballot (1,133,813 applications)
Boston Athletic Association on the 2026 field size and qualifier statistics
The Running Channel and TCS Sydney Marathon on the 2025 Sydney finisher count

History

Wikipedia, Cape Town Marathon and World Marathon Majors, used for the winners table and founding dates and cross-checked against race sites where possible
News24 and Daily Maverick on the 19 October 2025 cancellation

Disclaimer: This article is provided for general information. Race dates, ballot windows, entry routes and field sizes change; always confirm against the official race website before booking travel or entry. Figures were current at the date of publication and several are disputed between sources, as set out in the discrepancies section above.

For twenty years the series ran through six cities on three continents and never reached the one that produces most of the sport's champions. That changes on Sunday 23 May 2027, when Cape Town runs as a Major for the first time.

This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed and verified by humans.

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