The 13th edition of the Wings for Life World Run is now three days away, and organisers in Salzburg confirmed on Wednesday that more than 320,000 people across 192 nationalities have registered to run, walk or roll at the same instant on Sunday May 10 at 11:00 UTC. The simultaneous global start, the most recognisable feature of the event, will trigger Catcher Cars in 12 flagship locations and a virtual Catcher Car for hundreds of thousands of App Run participants who will set off from a kerb, a track, or a treadmill of their choosing. Every entry fee and donation goes to spinal cord injury research; the cumulative total since 2014 has now passed 53 million euros.
The flagship Vienna run, hosted in the grounds of Schoenbrunn Palace for the first time since 2017, has sold out its 12,500 cap and Munich's Olympiapark sold out at the weekend, organisers announced on Wednesday. Other flagship venues with confirmed capacity include the Sunderland 38-mile Roker seafront route, Sao Paulo's Ibirapuera Park, Cape Town's V and A Waterfront, the Red Bull Ring at Spielberg in Austria, and Melbourne's Albert Park. Each flagship operates its own physical Catcher Car; the App Run uses a virtual Catcher Car that draws from the same global timetable. Race ambassadors confirmed for the live coverage include Eliud Kipchoge, who will run the Vienna course, alongside Jakob Kiplimo on the Vienna app start and Florence Kiplagat from a flagship in Eldoret.
For first-time participants, the format remains its biggest selling point. Runners do not race a fixed distance; rather, the Catcher Car begins its pursuit 30 minutes after the global start at 14 km/h and accelerates incrementally until every runner has been overtaken. The female and male winners are simply those who travel the furthest before being caught. The 2025 men's champion, Belgium's Jo Fukuda, covered 88.4 km in just under six and a half hours; women's winner Nina Zarina ran 70.6 km. Both have re-entered for 2026. The App Run record stands at 73.1 km, set by Switzerland's Tobias Schneider in 2024 from a flat course outside Zurich.
Logistics over the next three days are unusually compressed for a global event. App Run participants can register up to 10:00 UTC on Sunday morning, and any download of the app from then on will not propagate in time for the start. Flagship registrations are now closed at all but two venues. Organisers are reminding flagship runners to allow at least 90 minutes for bag drop and the staggered Catcher Car briefings, which are themselves a draw for the spectator-light venues. The race is broadcast live on Red Bull TV with multilingual commentary; the broadcast cuts between flagships for roughly six hours before settling on the leading runners as the Catcher Car closes in.
This year carries a particular fundraising target: 7.5 million euros, the level required to fully fund the next phase of the Wings for Life Foundation's translational research programme into spinal cord regeneration. As of Wednesday afternoon, donations sat at just over 4.9 million euros, with the largest single team contribution coming from a 1,200-strong corporate entry registered to the Frankfurt flagship. Anton Kaplan, the foundation's research director, said in a Wednesday briefing that the post-race donation surge in the 24 hours after the global finish has historically accounted for a quarter of the annual total. Three days out, the event is on pace; on Sunday morning, the Catcher Cars will not be the only thing chasing a record.