The Comrades Marathon consistently delivers fascinating results and statistics, thanks to the race’s size and popularity, as well as the history and traditions that make it such an iconic event.

The 2026 Up Run, which took place on Sunday 14 June, largely produced increased or improved stats when compared to the 2025 edition, and these make for interesting reading.

Note: Where statistical data has increased from 2025 to 2026, the item is denoted by an up arrow (▲), while stats that have decreased are denoted by a down arrow (▼). Also note that the latter symbol does not necessarily mean the 2026 stats are worse than in 2025, e.g. a lower number of patients treated or hospitalised is a positive outcome.

…the 2026 race produced better percentage stats than the 2025 edition.

QUALIFIERS & STARTERS
The field size in 2026 was slightly smaller than in 2025, but overall, the 2026 race produced better percentage stats than the 2025 edition.

95.62% Qualification (▲)
This year, of the 22 676 runners who secured an entry, 21,683 successfully went on to qualify to start the race by posting the required qualifying time by 4 May. That represents a figure of 95.62% of entrants, which was up on the 93.96% of 2025, and gave the 2026 race the highest percentage of qualifiers since 2010.

98.19% Registered (▲)
With 21 292 entrants registering and collecting their race packs this year, the 2026 race can boast the smallest drop-off of runners not completing race pack collection, just 391 of qualified runners, in many years! (In 2025, the number of non-registered runners was 521, and the percentage of registered runners was 97.70%.)

93.84% Starters (▲)
Come race day, 20 349 lined up at the Start in Durban, representing 93.84% of the qualified field. This is an improvement on 2025 stats, when 20 975 out of 22 711 qualified runners lined up in Pietermaritzburg, representing a starting percentage of 92.35%. The 2026 race also has the highest percentage of starters since the 2006 race.

21.61% Female Starters (▲)
The percentage of women in the starting field was slightly up on 2025 numbers, with 4 398 (21.61%) out of 20 349 starters, compared to 4 253 (20.27%) out of 20 975 last year.

FINISHERS & MEDALS
With the 2026 race being an Up Run – traditionally less punishing than the Down Run – and featuring the shortest route in the recorded history of the race at 85.777km, it is not surprising that the rate of successful finishers is higher than in 2025.

89.81% Finishers (▲)
Out of the 20 349 runners who started the race, 18 276 completed the 85.777km distance before the final 12-hour cut-off, which gives the 2026 race an 89.81% finish rate. The number of finishers in 2026 is actually slightly up on last year, when 18 225 officially finished the race, giving the 2025 race an 86.88% finish rate. Of the three Starting Groups, the first group had the best finishing ratio of the day, with 98.04% of starters making it to the finish and earning a medal. Group 2 had an 89.98% success rate, while 72.82% of the runners in Group 3 claimed a medal.

87.65% Novice Finishers (▲)
In terms of novice participants, the 2026 race field included 4 683 first-timers lining up in Durban, representing 23.01% of the starting field. This is slightly less than the 4 971 of 2025, who made up 23.69% of the starting field. However, the percentage of novices that finished the race was higher this year, with 4 105 (87.65%) earning a medal in 2026, compared to 4 260 (85.69%) in 2025.

2 743 Back 2 Back Medals (▼)
The Comrades Marathon offers a unique incentive to runners who run their first Comrades and then return the next year for their second run, and this year saw very similar numbers to 2025, with 2 743 runners (15.01% of finishers) earning their Back 2 Back medals, just slightly down on the 2831 Back 2 Back medals handed out in 2025, to 15.53% of the finishers.

525 Green Numbers Awarded (▲)
The 2026 race saw 525 runners earn a Green Number for their 10th, 20th, 30th or 40th finish, which is two more than the 523 in 2025. The 2026 figures include 438 runners completing their 10th run to earn membership to the Green Number Club, compared to 421 last year.

MEDICAL MATTERS
With the welfare of all participants a core focus of the organisational drive of the event, the CMA is pleased to report that the medical statistics for the 2026 race look really good. As Chief Race Doctor Jeremy Boulter says, “It was a quiet day for us in the Medical Tent.”

1.8% Treated at Medical Tent (▼)
The Medical Tent at the Finish venue treated 293 patients, with eight needing to go into the ICU section. The St John’s First Aid section treated a further 100 patients, bringing the total number of patients seen to 393, which represented just 1.8% of the field. Based on past experience, the event medical team expected between 550 and 600 patients, so this was far fewer than expected and was also significantly down on the 440 patients treated in 2025.

23 Admitted to Hospital (▼)
A total of 94 patients were transported to the hospital, with 59 going directly from the route and 35 from the Finish. These numbers are once again significantly down on 2025 numbers, when 200 athletes were sent to hospital – 169 directly from the route, and 31 from the Finish. Of the 94 patients sent to hospital, 23 were admitted, with Netcare St Augustine’s seeing 20 and admitting five, Netcare Umhlanga seeing three and discharging all of them, and Netcare St Anne’s seeing 71, of which 18 were admitted. “By Wednesday evening, six patients were still in hospital, but all are progressing well and will be discharged soon,” says Doctor Boulter.

SOCIAL MEDIA, WORLD LIVE STREAM, WEBSITE & APP
While the Comrades Marathon’s social media platforms are busy throughout the year, they really come alive when race month arrives, and this year the traffic across these platforms was boosted hugely by the race being broadcast to the whole world as a livestream production, for the first time in the history of the Comrades Marathon, on multiple digital platforms and channels, including YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X. Meanwhile, the athlete tracking feature on the Comrades Marathon App also proved most popular on race day.

21.6 million views on race day (▲)
29 million views in race week (▲)
On race day, the Comrades Marathon social media platforms recorded huge traffic, with 10.6 million (10.6M) views on Facebook, 4.8M on Instagram, 5.25M on TikTok, 742,000 on YouTube, and 165,300 on X. These figures are all the more impressive when the rest of race week stats are added, bringing the totals to 14.6M on Facebook, 6.7M on Instagram, 5.67M on TikTok, 1.53M on YouTube, and 457 700 on X.

742 200 Livestream viewers (▲)
398 155 Hours consumed (▲)
Viewed in 122 countries (▲)
While the Comrades Marathon has been broadcast on South African television for over 45 years, this was the first time that the race broadcast was available anywhere in the world, and the huge interest in the event saw viewers in 122 different countries watch the race.

999% Up on Facebook (▲)
960% Up on Instagram (▲)
177% Up on X (▲)
The Comrades Marathon social media team did a brilliant job of keeping followers all over the world informed and entertained. This saw the event record a combined 29 million views across all platforms in race week, with astonishing increases in views, including Facebook climbing by a fraction under 1000%, and Instagram also climbing by 960%.

514 688 Visitors (▲)
On race day, the Comrades Marathon website and Comrades Marathon app attracted 514,688 unique visitors from 5242 cities in 194 countries on race day, and between them they tracked (followed) 1,799,676 participants and received 7,580,360 notifications.

47 487 Following Gerda (▼)
Although slightly lower than last year, the number of people tracking Gerda Steyn’s progress on the official Comrades Marathon App once again made her the outright most popular athlete in the field. (Last year, she was tracked by 52 630 App users.) Defending men’s champion Tete Dijana was next in the most-tracked list, moving up from third last year to second this year, followed by comedian Schalk Bezuidenhout, who moved up from fifth last year to third place in 2026.

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