Ethiopia's Tigist Gezahagn won the 2026 Vienna City Marathon in a course-record 2:20:06, edging her compatriot Haftamnesh Tesfaye over the closing 200 metres on Vienna's Heldenplatz finishing straight. In the men's race, Kenya's Fanny Kiprotich pulled a debut surprise to take the title in 2:06:43, beating a deeper field of pre-race favourites who had targeted the 43rd edition's flat, river-side course as a 2:05 opportunity. Sunday's race, run on 19 April under cool conditions, drew an event-record 11,800 marathon finishers and a combined weekend turnout of 41,500 across all distances.
The women's race was the headline. Gezahagn and Tesfaye broke clear from a six-strong lead group at 30 km and ran shoulder-to-shoulder through the final 12 km, with neither willing to push the pace decisively until the closing kilometre. Gezahagn's winning move came at 41 km, on the climb up the Burgring before the final right-hand turn into Heldenplatz; Tesfaye, in her first marathon since 2020 following maternity leave, matched her seven-year-old personal best with 2:20:18 for second. Kenya's Catherine Chepkemoi, the pre-race favourite on form, finished third in 2:21:59 after fading on the long, exposed Donaukanal stretch around 35 km. Gezahagn's 2:20:06 takes 24 seconds off Tirfi Tsegaye's 2017 Vienna course record and is the fastest women's marathon in Austria.
The men's race was the upset. Kiprotich, listed in the start guide as a 2:08-debut prospect from the Iten group, sat patiently in a six-strong lead group through 30 km in 1:30:11 before driving away on the long Mariahilfer Strasse straight in the closing 10 km. He finished in 2:06:43, 17 seconds ahead of Ethiopia's Demoze Negash and 24 seconds ahead of Kenya's Vincent Kibet Langat, with the pre-race favourite Bekele Lemi out at 32 km with what looked from the helicopter shot to be a hamstring problem. Behind the podium, Austria's Lemawork Ketema finished sixth in 2:09:01 to set a new national age-best for the men's marathon at 36, in front of a partisan crowd that had been waiting more than two decades for an Austrian sub-2:10 in Vienna.
The day's wider story was the carbon-plate question. Both Gezahagn and Kiprotich raced in the new Adidas Adios Pro Evo 3 — the same shoe that carried Sabastian Sawe to his sub-two-hour London time exactly one week later — and several of the men's chase pack were in the comparable Nike Alphafly 3. Vienna's race director Wolfgang Konrad confirmed in his post-race press conference that the event had introduced standard splits and full chip timing on the carbon footbridge sections this year for the first time, partly to support the data-collection effort the World Athletics Road Running Group is running on the new generation of super shoes. Vienna is one of three European races contributing to that data set, alongside Hamburg and Düsseldorf.
Around the elite races, Vienna also recorded its highest-ever participation across the half-marathon, the 10 km and the relay. The 11,800-strong marathon field is the deepest the race has fielded since the early 2000s, and the half-marathon's 19,400 finishers makes it the biggest mass-participation half in Austria. Konrad confirmed that the 2027 race, set for 18 April, will move to a new finish line on the Ringstrasse to accommodate the expected continued growth, and that the event has applied to host the European Athletics Marathon Championships in 2030. With Gezahagn's course record and Kiprotich's surprise win, Vienna closes its 43rd edition with the kind of weekend that justifies that ambition.