The Wings for Life World Run is one week away, and the world's largest single-day running event is on track for record participation. As of Saturday morning, more than 270,000 runners and wheelchair athletes had signed up to take part in the 13th edition on Sunday 10 May, with sign-ups still open for the App Run option until the morning of the race. Every entry fee is donated in full to the Wings for Life Foundation, which funds spinal cord injury research, taking the cumulative total raised by the event past £52 million across its 12 prior editions.
The event continues to use its signature format, in which all participants worldwide start at exactly the same moment, 13:00 Central European Summer Time, with no fixed finish line and no fixed distance. Thirty minutes after the gun, a virtual or physical catcher car begins to track them down at 14 kilometres per hour, accelerating in scheduled stages as the afternoon wears on, and a runner's race ends the moment the car passes them. The format means the longer-running participants in 2026 will likely cover more than 70 kilometres before being caught.
This year's flagship runs are spread across 35 host cities, with the Munich event again expected to draw the largest in-person crowd. The Sunrise event in Melbourne starts at 21:00 local time on Sunday evening, while the Brisbane and Perth flagships have moved to dawn starts to give Australian participants more comfortable conditions. In the United States, Sunrise, Florida, again hosts the country's largest gathering, with sign-ups for the Sunrise flagship closed earlier this week after passing the 10,000-runner cap.
The competitive end of the field has filled up since the late-April registration push, with last year's overall men's winner Jo Fukuda confirming his return to the Munich event and reigning women's champion Dominika Stelmach travelling from Poland to take part as part of the Wings for Life Polska team. UK content creator Morgan Wickenden, known online as Angry Ginge, has been confirmed as the celebrity catcher car driver for the Cambridge flagship, where local organisers expect a crowd north of 6,000 runners on the closed-road course around the city.
For runners still considering an entry, the App Run remains open until 12:00 CEST on race day. The event's structure makes it equally suitable for first-time runners and elites, since the catcher car catches everyone at their own pace, and the race ends in the same way for all participants. The Wings for Life Foundation has also confirmed that 100 per cent of entry fees will again be ring-fenced for spinal cord injury research grants, with the foundation's 2025–2026 funding round including 24 active research projects across 11 countries.