The Running Event Names The 2026 Best Running Stores

The Running Event named 65 honorees on Tuesday, the same total as 2025. Eighteen stores are new, 18 fell off, and Fleet Feet holds two fewer places than it did a year ago.

Published: Jul 29, 2026 4:49 pm

Jessy Carveth

Jessy Carveth

Jessy is our Senior News Editor, pro cyclist and former track and field athlete with a Bachelors degree in Kinesiology.

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The Running Event named 65 run specialty retailers to its 2026 Best Running Stores list on Tuesday, the same total it named in 2025. Because the list did not grow, the 18 stores that joined it this year did so by displacing 18 that were on it a year ago.

The program drew more than 8,300 nominations covering 268 stores across 49 states, according to the announcement TRE published Tuesday morning. Those figures move in different directions from 2025, when the trade show reported 7,967 nominations from 45 states and close to 270 unique stores. The geographic spread widened by four states and the raw nomination count rose about 4 percent, but the pool of stores actually competing was flat, and the number of honorees was fixed.

The selection runs in two stages. Nominated stores complete an evaluation form covering employee benefits, community work, inclusivity, sustainability and business practices. TRE then cuts the field to a top 100 and sends secret shoppers into each of those stores twice, scoring the visits alongside the form. That means 65 of the 100 shortlisted stores were named honorees, and 65 of the 268 nominated, or roughly one in four.

The Running Event Names The 2026 Best Running Stores 1

Who Came Off and Who Came On

Nine of the 18 newcomers have been honored before. 1st Place Sports of Jacksonville, Fla., Columbus Running Company, Marathon Sports, Track Shack, Salt Lake Running Company, Manhattan Running Company, Runner’s Corner, Scranton Running Company and Pro Bike + Run all appear in TRE’s published record of past winners. Columbus Running Company was Store of the Year in 2014 and had been off the list since 2016.

Five have no prior appearance in that record: Appalachian Running Company, footTech, Missouri Running Company, Pace Yourself Run Company and Queen City Running Company.

The departures are the more interesting half of the ledger. Runner’s Edge MT of Missoula, Mont., which was named Store of the Year in 2019 and was on the 2025 list, is not on this one. Neither is Whirlaway Sports Center of Methuen, Mass., which appears in 15 of the 17 lists TRE has published since 2008. Also off: RC Outfitters, Run Hub Northwest, Run In, Runner’s Edge NY, Running Wild, RunWell, The Running Elements, Independence Run & Hike, Up & Running in Dayton and Waco Running Company. Several of those stores have anchored the list for most of the past decade, and nothing in TRE’s announcement suggests any of them declined. With a fixed number of places, a store can be outscored without getting worse.

The Running Event Names The 2026 Best Running Stores 2

Fleet Feet Holds 12 Places, Down From 14

Fleet Feet accounted for 12 of the 65 honorees, about 18 percent of the list, down from 14 of 65 last year. Eight of its stores repeated: Charleston, Davenport, Hartford, Montclair, Nashville, Traverse City, Tuscaloosa, and the combined Winston-Salem and Clemmons operation. Six came off, in Fayetteville, Fort Wayne, Gaithersburg, Lexington, Louisville and West Reading. Four markets are new to the list, in Athens, Birmingham, Cincinnati and Dallas Fort Worth.

What the Secret Shoppers Were Sent to Score

TRE described its shopper methodology in more detail this year than last, and the detail is the most substantive change in the program. The two visits are split by category. One covers footwear alone, judging what TRE calls fit process knowledge and personalized shoe recommendations, the sequence of measurements and questions about training and injury history, sometimes including a gait analysis, that determines whether a runner leaves with a shoe that actually fits and sits in the right category for their mileage.

The second visit covers everything else. It scores how well staff educate customers and guide sales across socks and supporting gear, which amounts to a graded category for the part of a run specialty transaction that happens after the shoes are chosen. Run specialty has spent years expanding past technical footwear into apparel, recovery products and accessories, and the award now measures how well retailers sell it.

The other half of what the program rewards is community work, which the evaluation form scores directly and which stores have leaned into as run clubs have grown into a reason to walk through the door. Genae Salinas, TRE’s event director, said run specialty stores are “gathering spaces where people build confidence, find community, and discover a lifelong connection to movement.”

The 2026 Store of the Year will be named on Dec. 3 at TRE’s Industry Awards Dinner in San Antonio, the closing night of a show marking its 20th anniversary. Running Lab, the Brighton, Mich., shop that won the 2025 award, is on this year’s list. Registration for the show opens the week of Aug. 3.