The team that has dominated long-distance road racing for the better part of a decade is heading into the heart of its first season under a new name, and the early returns suggest the change of title sponsor was always going to be more cosmetic than structural. As of 1 January, what was the NN Running Team for ten years is now the dsm-firmenich Running Team, with the Swiss-Dutch nutrition-and-flavour group taking over as title partner from NN Group, who have stayed on as a founding partner. The team's coaching, athlete management and Kaptagat training base in Kenya remain in place, and the official roster, including Eliud Kipchoge, Joshua Cheptegei, Letesenbet Gidey, Nienke Brinkman and Abdi Nageeye, is largely unchanged from the squad that closed out 2025.
The change has nonetheless been visible at every major race week so far. dsm-firmenich kit replaced the familiar all-black-and-white NN livery at the Tokyo, London and Boston majors, and the title partner's name appeared on the front of bibs and on the broadcast graphics in a way the previous arrangement rarely allowed. The team's choice of branded language, "powered by science, nutrition and data", has shown up in pre-race press packs and athlete-bio materials, framed around dsm-firmenich's two-decade investment in sports-nutrition formulations through brands like Maxinutrition and the more recently absorbed Lonza supplement business.
The first full season has already produced a marquee result. Kipchoge's training partner Sabastian Sawe wore dsm-firmenich kit when he ran 1:59:30 at the TCS London Marathon on 26 April, the first sub-two-hour time in a record-eligible marathon and the result the rebrand was always going to be measured against. The team's communications around that day leaned more heavily than usual on the science platform, with public details of Sawe's marathon-week fuelling plan, including a 115-gram-per-hour carbohydrate intake target, fitting neatly with the new sponsor's interest in nutrition messaging. Whether by coincidence or by design, the rebrand's first marquee race was also its biggest scientific marketing win.
The remainder of the year stacks up favourably. Cheptegei is expected to make his marathon debut later in 2026 after sitting out London, having signed off on a build that will likely target Berlin in September; Gidey is targeting a return to the half-marathon distance over the summer after a quiet 2025; Brinkman is mid-build for a defence of her European cross-country selection, and Nageeye remains the team's senior road-marathon presence in Europe. Behind the headline names, the development arm of the team has continued to absorb young Ethiopian and Kenyan talent into the Kaptagat camp, including a new junior cohort signed at the start of the year and quietly profiled in dsm-firmenich's first content drop in February.
What the rebrand has not changed is the team's basic structure. Global Sports Communication remains the operational entity behind the squad, Patrick Sang continues as head coach, and Nike stays on as the team's main supplier and shoe partner. New technology partner Huawei has taken on the smartwatch role previously held by other vendors, a quieter but commercially significant addition that hints at where the team's data-platform ambitions are likely to head over the next few years. For the runners themselves, the day-to-day work of camps, sessions and training cycles is unchanged. For the brand, however, the next four months, leading from Sawe's London victory through Cheptegei's expected debut and into the autumn marathon block, are now the test of whether the dsm-firmenich era can extend the streak the NN Running Team set during its decade at the top.