Race weekend on La Palma opens at 5pm WEST on Thursday with the Transvulcania Vertical Kilometer, a 7.28km climb from the seafront at Tazacorte to El Time on the western escarpment that gains 1,164m of altitude and loses just 102m on the way. The 2026 edition is the first time the VK has counted toward the WMRA Mountain Running World Cup standings, sitting alongside the Half Marathon on Friday and the 73km ultra on Saturday in a three-day festival that organisers Adidas Terrex and the Cabildo Insular de La Palma confirmed last week had sold a record 6,400 entries across all distances.
The men's start list is headed by Kenya's Patrick Kipngeno, the reigning WMRA short uphill world champion, and Spaniard Oriol Cardona Coll, who won at Sierre-Zinal and the Pikes Peak Ascent in 2024 and finished second on this course twelve months ago. Ireland's Zak Hanna, France's Joseph Gray and Italy's Davide Magnini complete a 12-deep elite men's field. The women's race is led by Kenya's Philaries Jeruto Kisang, who took silver at last September's WMRA World Cup final, and three-time Transvulcania VK winner Sara Alonso of Spain. Russia's Ekaterina Mityaeva, Britain's Scout Adkin and Hungary's Marta Alvaro complete the front of the women's field.
Adidas Terrex confirmed on the morning of the race that all of its sponsored athletes will run in the new Agravic Speed Ultra 2, the brand's mid-stack carbon-plated trail racer that launched last month with a UK retail price of £200. Salomon and Hoka have similarly briefed press on lighter-stack uphill-only setups, with Hoka's prototype Tecton X 3 carbon trail spike spotted on Joseph Gray's feet at the bib pickup at Los Llanos on Wednesday afternoon. Trail running's growing reliance on category-specific super shoes is being closely watched by the WMRA, whose technical committee last month opened a consultation on whether stack-height limits should be applied to mountain running formats.
Course conditions are forecast as 24°C with light south-westerly winds at the start in Tazacorte, dropping to 16°C by the finish on the El Time ridge. The race uses the same ascending route as the 2025 edition with a single change: a short detour at the 4.2km mark that adds 12m of vertical gain but removes a tight switchback that produced a pile-up in last year's race. Course-record holder Stian Angermund's 33:11 from 2021 is expected to come under serious threat, with Cardona's 33:24 from 2024 the second-fastest time ever recorded on the route.
Saturday's 73km ultramarathon remains the headline event of the festival and will be run from Faro de Fuencaliente in the south of the island to Tazacorte on the west coast, climbing 4,350m of cumulative ascent. Women's pre-race favourite Mityaeva has the form line of the elite field after last weekend's win at the Coros Skyrace, and on the men's side Pablo Villa, Mario Olmedo and Britain's Tom Owens are expected to set the early pace. iRunFar's live coverage of the VK begins at 4:45pm WEST and Half Marathon coverage opens on Friday at 8am WEST, with the ultra blog rolling at 5:45am WEST on Saturday.