Kenenisa Bekele will run the BMW Berlin Marathon on 27 September, the race organisers confirmed on Friday. It will be the 44-year-old Ethiopian's first race of 2026, and his first marathon finish since the Paris Olympics if he completes the distance in the city where he has come closest to the world record.
Bekele has won in Berlin twice and missed the world record on both occasions by a margin that still rankles. He ran 2:03:03 in 2016 and 2:01:41 in 2019, the latter two seconds outside Eliud Kipchoge's mark. Had he found those two seconds, he would have become the first athlete in history to hold the world records at 5,000m, 10,000m and the marathon at the same time. He held the two track records for around fifteen years, longer than anyone else, and collected Olympic titles at 5,000m and 10,000m alongside eleven World Cross Country golds.
Expectations for this year are more measured, and the organisers have said as much. At 41 he was leading the London Marathon in the closing stages before finishing second in 2:04:15, a masters world record for the over-40 age group that still stands. That run earned him Olympic selection, but in Paris in 2024 he finished 39th. A fast, honest run rather than a win is the realistic ceiling, and in a field this deep that would still be worth watching.
The men's start list is led on paper by Gabriel Geay of Tanzania at 2:03:00, with Getaneh Molla at 2:03:34, Guye Adola at 2:03:46 and Shura Kitata at 2:03:59 all inside 2:04. Erick Sang, Selemon Barega and Taresa Tolosa follow, and a Japanese contingent of Kenya Sonota, Tsubasa Ichiyama, Kiyoto Hirabayashi, Yuhei Urano and Hidekazu Hijikata gives the race an unusually broad mid-field, all of them inside 2:07.
The women's race is headed by Tigst Assefa, the world record holder and a two-time winner in Berlin, with defending champion Rosemary Wanjiru next on the list at 2:16:14. The late addition is Alisa Vainio, who took the European title in Birmingham last month in a championship record of 2:22:26 and who ran 2:20:39 to win in Seville in February. That mark made the Finn the fastest Scandinavian marathon runner in history, moving her past Ingrid Kristiansen's 2:21:06, a record that had stood since the former world record holder's era.