The Comrades Marathon Association has published official 2026 seedings for the 99th edition of the Ultimate Human Race, confirming that 21,633 athletes have successfully qualified to start the Up Run between Durban and Pietermaritzburg on Sunday 14 June. With just over three weeks until race day, runners can now log in to the 2026 entry list at comrades.com to view their start group and batch allocation, the final administrative milestone before the long-promised three-group start makes its debut at South Africa's biggest mass-participation race.
The seedings, announced on Tuesday 12 May, formally activate the new three-group system signed off by the CMA board earlier in the year. Group 1 will leave Durban City Hall at 05:00, Group 2 at 05:15 and Group 3 at 05:30, replacing the single mass start that has bunched more than twenty thousand runners behind the iconic Chariots of Fire opening in previous editions. Approximately 9,952 runners have been allocated to Group 1, 6,704 to Group 2 and 4,972 to Group 3, with batches inside each group set from fastest to slowest qualifying time and the cut-off clock counting down to the same 17:30 finish at the Hollywoodbets Kingsmead Stadium.
The CMA has framed the staggered departures as a safety and congestion measure rather than a competitive change, and confirmed that gun-to-tape times for elite athletes will continue to be recorded from the Group 1 start. Race director Alain Dalais said the new format would allow medical, water-table and crowd-control teams to manage the opening kilometres of an 86.7-kilometre Up Run more effectively, particularly the steep climb out of Durban and the early descent on Field's Hill. The qualification window itself closed on 4 May after the Buffalo City Marathon, with the CMA recording a 95.37 per cent qualification success rate among entered athletes, its highest figure in more than a decade and up from 93.96 per cent in 2025.
For the elite field, the seeding announcement crystallises the matchups already shaping the 2026 narrative. Defending champion Piet Wiersma of the Netherlands and 2024 winner Gerda Steyn, who is chasing a record-extending sixth title and a fresh women's Up Run record, will be among the named professionals leaving in Group 1. Tete Dijana and reigning women's Down Run champion Alexandra Morozova will line up alongside them, while South Africa's seeded amateur ranks have absorbed several sub-six-hour international visitors qualifying through approved overseas marathons. The deep field reflects the race's record-fast sell-out last November, when entries closed in under ten hours and prompted the CMA to add a one-off substitution ballot earlier this spring.
Attention now turns to final-month logistics. Race-pack collection runs across the Durban International Convention Centre Expo from Thursday 11 June through Saturday 13 June, with elite athletes scheduled for closed-doors press appearances on Friday 13 June. The CMA has reiterated that timing chips will not be redistributed after pickup closes, and that runners who fail to appear at their allocated start group on race morning will not be permitted to slot into a later group. With the 2026 slogan "Ska Fela Moya" printed on every official bib, the new three-group start is now the operational backbone of an event the CMA has spent the last twelve months reshaping around record qualification numbers.