The Broken Arrow Skyrace at Palisades Tahoe, already one of the world's marquee mountain-running festivals, will stage its largest edition yet on June 18-21 with a confirmed $150,000 total prize purse — the biggest independent payout in trail running — and a $30,000 first prize for the flagship 23K. Race director Brendan Madigan confirmed the numbers this week, positioning the 2026 event as the richest non-corporate trail race in the world and a headline date for a season already shaping up as a turf war between the Golden Trail World Series, UTMB and stand-alone classics.
The upgraded purse comes with a restructured payout across the weekend's three flagship distances. The 23K winners will each collect $30,000, with prize money distributed down to tenth place and bonuses available for course records and for breaking specific segment times. The Ascent, Broken Arrow's iconic uphill-only race, will pay its winners $6,000 apiece, while the 46K — the most technical event on the programme — offers $4,000 to its champions. Organisers also confirmed a separate $20,000 purse for the Vertical Kilometre on Thursday evening, which has quietly become one of the strongest VK fields in North America.
Competitively, the 23K remains the centrepiece. The race returns to the 2026 World Mountain Running Association World Cup schedule as a "gold label" long-distance event, and carries Golden Trail World Series points for the second successive year. Entry lists released this week point to another clash between reigning 23K champion Grayson Murphy, US trail stars Allie McLaughlin and Anna Gibson, and a European contingent led by Philemon Kiriago and Spain's Maria Mercedes Pila. Defending men's champion Patrick Kipngeno, who broke the course record in 2024, has also re-entered.
Beyond the elites, Madigan has doubled down on Broken Arrow's community mandate. The Trail Futures NTN youth national championship, launched at Palisades in 2023, returns on Friday, June 19 with an expanded format and will for the first time feature two youth races: the U-20 Eagle and a new U-14 Kestrel. Both races will run on abbreviated mountain courses within the resort, and Madigan said organisers wanted "every piece of the under-20 pipeline to feel at home at Broken Arrow" from this year forward. A separate women's development clinic, hosted the day before race weekend, has also added fifty slots.
For the broader trail sport, the Broken Arrow numbers are an important statement at a moment when professional trail running is still trying to establish itself as a viable career path. Prize money in global trail running remains uneven, with many World Series races paying less than $5,000 for a win and some UTMB World Series events offering no cash prizes at all. A $30,000 winner's cheque at a single non-championship event reshapes the conversation, and with two months still to go until the 2026 edition, Palisades Tahoe's Saturday afternoon start line has quickly become the most important date on the early summer trail calendar.