parkrun is coming to the Caribbean. The free weekly 5K that began with 13 runners in a south London park in October 2004 will launch at Festival Green in Camana Bay, Grand Cayman on Saturday 29 August, making the Cayman Islands the first Caribbean nation to host the event. The movement now spans some 2,800 locations worldwide, from Australia and Japan to Namibia and the United States, and last month celebrated its millionth run with a gathering at Bushy Park, where it all began.
The Cayman launch is the work of Rob Duggan, who grew up on the islands and discovered parkrun while living in the UK — and whose wife, Elizabeth, happens to be parkrun's chief executive. Duggan has spent months assembling the essentials: a traffic-free course provided by developer Dart, consisting of three loops through the wooded, mangrove-fringed area behind Festival Green, and a roster of volunteers to marshal the event every Saturday morning. The Ministry of Health, Environment and Sustainability is backing the launch as part of its Step Into Wellness campaign.
Local conditions have shaped the details. The run will start at 6.30am for most of the year to beat the Caribbean heat, shifting to 7am from November to February when the sun rises later. In keeping with parkrun tradition, the event is open to runners and walkers of every standard, with a volunteer tail walker guaranteeing nobody finishes last. Dogs are welcome on a short lead, one per participant, and wheelchair users and parents pushing buggies are equally at home.
Duggan hopes the event can reach people the existing running scene has missed. "I'm very much in love with the ethos of parkrun as a free and accessible tool for mental and physical health, and it was clear that this was missing from the running scene in Cayman," he said, adding that established clubs are sometimes wrongly perceived as exclusive. He is equally clear the weekly run should complement rather than compete with the island's charity 5Ks, pointing to parkrun's international record as a gateway into clubs and fundraising events.
For parkrun, the Caribbean debut extends an expansion that has accelerated since the pandemic, with new events opening across the UK and beyond throughout 2026. For Cayman's runners, the appeal is simpler: a free, timed, sociable 5K every Saturday, followed — if the culture travels as reliably as the format — by coffee and breakfast on Festival Green. Registration opens on the parkrun website and app closer to launch day.