Comrades Expands Its 100th Anniversary Field to 28,000 With Half the Places Going to a Ballot.

Entries for the 100th Comrades Marathon open Tuesday with the field capped at 28,000, and most of the public cannot enter then. About 52 percent of the places go to a general ballot that does not open until Sept. 9.

The ballot follows a 2026 race that was capped at 22,000 and sold out in under 10 hours. The centenary cap sits 27 percent above that, and 3,400 above the 24,636 entries of the 2019 up run, though 27,000 were sold for the cancelled 2020 race. Another South African ultramarathon is expanding: Two Oceans has raised its 56K field from 14,000 to 21,000 for 2027.

Tuesday’s window, opening at 10 a.m. locally, is reserved for Green Number and Yellow Number holders and for Amabeadibeadi charity places. Comrades Marathon Association members enter from Sept. 2, and general applications run from Sept. 9 to Sept. 22, with the draw on Sept. 23, a ballot run as the big city marathons do. Fees are unchanged: R1,200 (about $75) for South Africans, R2,000 (about $125) for the rest of Africa, R4,500 (about $280) elsewhere. The qualifier is a marathon in 4:59:59 or faster, run between June 15, 2026 and May 3, 2027.

The cap is not the race-day number. In 2025, 24,172 entries produced 20,974 starters, and applied to 28,000 that conversion points to roughly 24,300 runners on the start line, about 3,300 more than have ever started a Comrades. Carry the 2025 finish rate of 86.82 percent through the same arithmetic, by Marathon Handbook’s calculation from the association’s own figures, and it gives about 21,100 finishers inside the 12-hour cut-off, a record by some 2,900, with about 3,200 missing it against 2,765 in 2025.

Sue Forge, the race director, said the increase “has been carefully considered and is supported by extensive operational planning.” The start has been rebuilt twice. The 2025 race was the first Comrades run as a split start, sending two groups off at 5:45 a.m. and 6 a.m., and this June’s up run used three groups, at 5 a.m., 5:15 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. The last of those groups finished at 72.82 percent, against 98.04 percent for the first.

What an Unsanctioned Comrades Means for Entrants

The race goes ahead without the national federation’s approval. Athletics South Africa left the centenary edition off its 2027 fixtures list on Aug. 18, the day before the launch, saying the race “is not sanctioned by ASA” and citing the organizers’ failure to comply with the sport’s governance framework.

For most entrants the immediate change is a line off the entry form. Mark Leathers, the association’s chairperson, told TimesLive that runners will not need an Athletics South Africa license from next year, “but that said, the qualifications remain exactly the same.” Those qualifications matter, because the marathons that produce a Comrades qualifier are staged inside the structure the association has left. The association withdrew from KwaZulu-Natal Athletics in November 2025 and asked to affiliate directly to ASA, which refused.

The sharper exposure sits with the 20 runners who take gold medals. Writing in The Citizen before the members’ vote, Wesley Botton argued that without officials enforcing the rules of the sport the “performances of elite athletes will not be recognised” and will not count for national team selection. The purse is more than R8.9 million (about $556,000), up about 9 percent and billed as the largest in African road running, with R1 million (about $62,500) each to the winners.

Members voted 873 to 229 on Aug. 1 to go it alone, and rejected re-affiliation 694 to 338. The provincial federation has filed a cease-and-desist notice and says it is owed more than R4 million (about $250,000) in 2026 levies, as Daily Maverick reported. Leathers has said there is no legal basis to stop the race.

The down run starts at Pietermaritzburg City Hall at 5 a.m. and, for the first time, finishes inside the Kings Park rugby precinct in Durban, on fields that Forge said “offer significantly more space for the finish area and race village.” It is expected to measure about 91km (56.5 miles) against 89.98km in 2025, with the official distance pending roadworks that may trim it. Ballot applicants will know on Sept. 23 whether they have a place.