Nine days out from the World Athletics Road Running Championships, the shape of the weekend in Copenhagen is now fully public. Three world titles will be decided on 19 and 20 September — the one mile and the 5km on the Saturday, the half marathon on the Sunday — and up to 65,000 recreational runners will cover the same routes as the elite fields. Fælledparken serves as the start and finish hub for every race, and as the site of the Runners Area that anchors the public programme.
The half marathon course is not new, and that is the organisers’ argument for it. It is the same route used by the Copenhagen Half Marathon in 2024 and 2025, taking runners through the historic inner city and out into the bridge districts. Dorte Vibjerg, chief executive of Sparta Athletics & Running, said the organisers were “proud to announce this course as the official World Championships course”. Capacity is 35,000. The elite women start at 09:10 and the elite men at 09:45, with the B and C elite fields and then the mass race following within two minutes.
Saturday’s two races are built for speed and for spectators. The one mile, capped at 10,000 entrants, runs a V-shaped route down Østerbrogade, passes a power zone at Trianglen and finishes alongside Parken Stadium. The 5km, capped at 20,000, takes in the historic Nyboder district and includes a dual-direction stretch along the lakes, which means recreational runners will see the eventual champions coming the other way. None of the three courses is hilly.
Demand for places forced a change in how they were sold. Entry to the mass half marathon was allocated by ballot — the first time a Danish road race has used one — after the 2025 Copenhagen Half sold out in two and a half hours and left a queue of runners with nothing. The lottery ran for a fortnight in March, giving every applicant the same chance regardless of when they entered. The half marathon is now sold out, with a resale waiting pool the only route in.
The championships are hosted for World Athletics by the Danish Athletics Federation and Sparta Athletics & Running, working with the City of Copenhagen, Sport Event Denmark and Wonderful Copenhagen. The timing places them awkwardly between the Ultimate Championship in Budapest this weekend and the Berlin Marathon on 27 September, a congested fortnight that will test how many of the sport’s headline names are willing to race twice. For those who do turn up, the flat courses and the September weather offer as good a platform for fast championship times as the road calendar provides.