The 2026 BMW Berlin Marathon starts on Sunday 27 September, and the elite field sets off from Straße des 17. Juni at 08:45 local time (CEST). That is 07:45 in the UK, 02:45 on the US East Coast and 23:45 on Saturday on the Pacific coast. The leading handbikers go at 08:20 and the elite wheelchair racers at 08:26, and five mass waves follow the elite start. Organisers expect well over 56,000 runners from more than 160 nations. The course is the usual flat loop, passing the Victory Column, Kurfürstendamm and Potsdamer Platz before the finish through the Brandenburg Gate.
In Germany, RTL has free-to-air coverage from 08:30 to about 12:15 CEST (07:30–11:15 BST), with a stream on RTL+. Coverage then continues on the race's YouTube channel. In the United States the race is on FloTrack. Viewers elsewhere should check the organisers' list of international broadcasters, because streaming rights vary by country.
The women's race is the main attraction. Tigst Assefa has won Berlin twice. She ran 2:15:37 in 2022, almost 20 minutes faster than her previous best, and set a world record of 2:11:53 on this course a year later. She won London in the spring, her fourth Marathon Major title, and has said openly that she is coming back to try to break the world record again. The mark she has to beat is Ruth Chepngetich's 2:09:53 from Chicago in 2024. Her training partner Amane Beriso, defending champion Rosemary Wanjiru and Finland's Alisa Vainio are also entered. Wanjiru won last year's race in 2:21:05 in the heat. Vainio became European champion in Birmingham last month, has a best of 2:20:39 from Seville, and won the Finnish title on 12 September, 15 days before Berlin.
The men's race lost its obvious favourite on 27 August, when world record holder Sabastian Sawe withdrew injured. Sawe ran 1:59:30 in London in April. The field is still deep: the 15 fastest men entered have all run under 2:06:30, and 25 have run under 2:08. Guye Adola won Berlin in 2021 and ran 2:03:54 to win Rotterdam this spring. Gabriel Geay has the fastest personal best left in the field, 2:03:00 from Valencia in 2022. Getaneh Molla and Shura Kitata have both run under 2:04, and Olympic 10,000m champion Selemon Barega wants to improve on his 2:05:00.
Kenenisa Bekele is also back in Berlin. He won the race twice and ran 2:01:41 here in 2019, two seconds off the world record at the time. His result matters less than whether the weather holds. Last year's race was run in the heat. If Sunday is cool and still, Assefa's record attempt is the thing to watch. If it isn't, the men's race should turn tactical, and the winner will be whoever copes best with an early pace set for someone who isn't there.