The Zegama-Aizkorri SkyMarathon returns to the Gipuzkoan hills on Sunday 24 May, five weeks out from today, as the defining event of the European skyrunning spring and the second stop on the 2026 Merrell Skyrunner World Series. The race has been run without interruption since 2002, and while it now sits inside the broader World Trail Majors and Skyrunner calendars, it has lost none of its cult status: the main marathon bibs are still allocated by a tightly-policed lottery, this year drawing just 225 names from a pre-registration pool that opened for ten days in mid-January.
The course has barely changed in more than two decades. The 42km, 2,700m-of-gain loop starts and finishes in the town square of Zegama and climbs through the mist-line onto the Aizkorri ridge, before looping back via Aratz, Aketegi and the chapel descent of San Adrian. The elevation profile is spikier than most European mountain marathons, with only a handful of genuinely runnable sections between the sawtooth climbs, and the cultural atmosphere — bagpipes at the top of every crest, cowbells and choirs in every village — has made it the one European race trail runners will cross borders to spectate.
On the men's side, Kilian Jornet's return to Zegama — confirmed on his own channels in early April as part of his build towards UTMB in late August — reframes the entire race. Jornet, who won here in a rain-soaked 2023 edition and who holds the event course record of 3:46:33 set way back in 2019, will face a refreshed generation headed by Spain's Aritz Egea, France's Elhousine Elazzaoui and Scotland's Jonathan Albon. Great Britain's Tom Evans is also entered, in what would be his Zegama debut. New Zealand's Daniel Jones and Ecuador's Joaquin Lopez round out a men's top ten that reads as the deepest Zegama field for a decade.
The women's race is arguably even more open. Defending champion Sara Alonso returns on home ground, but the headline entries belong to Sweden's Tove Alexandersson — the skyrunning and ski-mountaineering polymath, back at this distance after a long injury break — and Americans Allie McLaughlin and Anna Gibson. Spain's Oihana Azkorbebeitia, third in 2025, and Norway's Silje Naess complete a depth chart that could produce the first sub-4:45 women's result on the course. Weather permitting, the women's course record of 4:43:23, set by Maude Mathys in 2022, is a realistic target rather than a token one.
Beyond the racing, 2026 represents a calmer year for the organising committee after a turbulent 12 months of course-marking disputes and a brief World Trail Majors re-classification scare. The vertical kilometre, held on the Saturday, retains a 200-runner field and is again a full Skyrunner World Series scoring race. Live tracking will be available through the federation app for the first time across every bib, not just the elites, after a successful pilot at the 2025 Livigno Skymarathon. For those who missed the lottery, Zegama's enduring spectator appeal remains reason enough to book the flight to Bilbao.