With a week to go before the gun, the Broken Arrow Skyrace is putting the finishing touches to what has become one of the most ambitious gatherings on the global trail calendar. Returning to Palisades Tahoe from 18 to 21 June, the event has grown into a four-day, ten-distance festival that draws the sport's elite and thousands of recreational runners to the same high-alpine playground above Lake Tahoe. The scale of the operation, and the talent it now attracts, has made the third weekend of June a fixture for anyone serious about mountain running in North America.
The headline figure this year is a financial one. Organisers will hand out a total prize purse of $150,000, which they bill as the largest of any independent, non-corporate trail race in the world. In a discipline that has long asked its best athletes to chase performance for love rather than money, that sum represents a meaningful statement of intent, and it has helped ensure that the elite fields across the marquee distances are among the deepest the race has assembled.
The programme itself is built for variety and for spectacle. Runners can choose from distances including the 46k, the 23k, the 18k, the Vertical K and the 11k, while the most committed take on multi-race combinations such as the Triple Crown and the Iron Crown. Much of the course sits above the tree line, leaving competitors exposed to the elements but rewarded with sweeping views of the emerald water below and the unmistakable granite terrain of the former Olympic resort.
The 2026 edition also continues the race's investment in the next generation. Two youth events, the U-20 race known as the Eagle and a U-14 race called the Kestrel, are scheduled for Friday 19 June, giving young runners the chance to test themselves on the same high trails as the professionals they watch. Presented by Nike's All Conditions Gear line, the festival has consistently positioned itself as much as a celebration of the sport's future as a showcase for its current stars.
For the elite contenders, Broken Arrow also serves as an important marker on the road to a busy summer of skyrunning and ultra-distance racing, with the European season and the Western States 100 looming immediately beyond it. A strong showing on the technical, high-altitude terrain of Palisades Tahoe is both a prize in its own right and a statement of form. A week out, the only thing missing is the starter's signal.