Maine's Jack Bassett won the 2026 Maui Marathon on Sunday in 2:44:24, leading home a sunrise field that took off in staggered start lines from Kāʻanapali on the western edge of the island. California's Alison Green took the women's race in 3:09:09, finishing seventh overall. Honolulu's Chris Schabron was the half-marathon winner in 1:21:23, the fastest time across all four distances on a course that the organisers ran out and back along the West Maui coast.
The men's marathon was a closer race than the winning margin suggests. Bassett pulled away in the second half, but Maui's Jake Gibbs — the defending champion who had won the 26.2-mile race a year earlier — held second place all the way to the finish in 2:56:54. Canada's Nicolas Samsom completed the men's podium just two minutes back in 2:58:56, with the top three the only finishers under three hours on the day. Green's 3:09:09, by contrast, gave her a margin of more than 14 minutes over second-placed Leeza Ershtein of Georgia (3:23:42) and 16 over third-placed Abigail Prinzo of Honolulu (3:25:55).
The Maui Marathon, in its sixteenth running since 2010, is among the most travelled-to road races in the United States, drawing a participant mix that the organisers said spanned the United States, Canada, Mexico and Japan. The Hawaiʻi Tourism Authority is a presenting partner of the event, which is held under the umbrella of the Valley Isle Road Runners and which raised funds this year for environmental restoration work tied to recovery on the western side of the island. Sunday's marathon, half-marathon, 10K and 5K all started in Kāʻanapali and finished among the cheering spectators at the Whalers Village resort.
Beyond the overall winners, the Maui leaderboard told a story of long-distance specialists travelling for an early-season event in mild Pacific conditions. The marathon course is sea-level, exposed in places to trade winds and characterised by long straights along Honoapiilani Highway. Sunday's morning was overcast with a tail wind in the first miles, conditions that the field's pacing splits suggest favoured the front group, with Bassett dropping his closest pursuer through the half in 1:20 and going on to negative-split the back half to within seconds.
For Hawaii's road-racing calendar, the Maui Marathon's late-April date increasingly puts it in conversation with the Big Sur, Eugene and Vienna marathons as a destination event for amateur runners chasing scenery and a Boston-qualifying performance in temperate conditions. With Sunday's results filed and the half-marathon entry having reached its 1,800-runner cap for the second consecutive year, organiser Valley Isle Road Runners said the 2027 edition will move to a 26 April start date — and confirmed that a 50K distance will be added in 2027 to broaden the weekend's offering.