Eliud Kipchoge Is Running the Melbourne Marathon, and Here’s What You Need to Know

Eliud Kipchoge will start the Melbourne Marathon on Sunday, Oct. 11, the third race of a world tour that is taking the two-time Olympic champion to a marathon on every continent. He will set off from Batman Avenue with up to 20,000 other runners, the biggest field the race has ever allowed, and like the rest of them he will finish with a lap inside the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

We reported in March that Melbourne had joined the tour, after the race announced his entry. Kipchoge said at the time that he was “excited to return to Australia and experience the energy of the Nike Melbourne Marathon Festival.” He was last in the country just over a year ago, when he ran 2:08:31 for ninth at the Sydney Marathon in its first year as a World Marathon Major.

When the Races Start

The marathon goes at 6:15 a.m. local time on Sunday. Victoria moves to daylight saving time on Oct. 4, so for viewers in North America the start falls at 3:15 p.m. ET (12:15 p.m. PT) on Saturday, Oct. 10, and in the U.K. it is 8:15 p.m. on Saturday evening. The rest of the festival is spread across the weekend, according to the organizers’ race week guide:

• Saturday, Oct. 10: 10K at 7 a.m., 5K at 8:30 a.m., 3K at 9:15 a.m., Mini Marathon at 11 a.m. in Yarra Park
• Sunday, Oct. 11: marathon at 6:15 a.m., half-marathon at 9:45 a.m.

If you were hoping for a late entry, the general allocation for the marathon has already run out. Bibs have to be collected by the day before each race from the race week office at the MCG, which opens on Wednesday, Oct. 7. The marathon cut-off is 7 hours 45 minutes on gun time, and every runner needs to be inside the MCG by 2 p.m.

A Faster Course for 2026

This year’s marathon runs the other way round, heading toward Beach Road in the opposite direction to previous editions, and the climb from Birdwood Avenue up to Domain Road at about 36K, which used to arrive just as legs were starting to go, has been taken out. The organizers say the new layout cuts up to 20 percent of the elevation and 30 percent of the turns, widens the road in several sections and does away with the false finish on Southbank Boulevard and Alexandra Avenue. In their words, it is “the biggest change since we moved to the MCG 20 years ago.” The course still passes Flinders Street Station, the lap of Albert Park Lake and the St Kilda foreshore on the way round.

Kipchoge’s Marathons Since Sydney

Kipchoge is 41 and turns 42 on Nov. 5. The tour raises money for the Eliud Kipchoge Foundation’s environmental and education work, and after each stop so far he has talked far more about the people on the course than about his finishing time. Cape Town, where he finished 16th in 2:13:29 in his first marathon on African soil, was “a celebration of running on this beautiful course,” he said afterward. In Porto Alegre in July he went through halfway in 1:05:07, according to our analysis of his splits, and finished 12th. “Your cheers not only lifted me but also all the other runners in the race to make it an unforgettable experience for all of us,” he told the city after the race.

Melbourne’s men’s course record is 2:09:12, run by Timothy Ronoh of Kenya in 2022 on the old route. Kipchoge’s run in Sydney last year would have beaten it by 41 seconds. The winner on Sunday takes home AUD 25,000 ($17,300), and prize money is paid down to fifth place.

The Records and the Recent Winners

Sinead Diver holds the women’s course record, 2:25:19 from 2018, according to the race’s event history. Jack Rayner has won the men’s race for the last two years, in 2:11:48 in 2024 and 2:15:02 in 2025, and Caitlin Adams took the women’s title last year in 2:30:26, in what the ABC reported was the first marathon she had ever finished. The fastest marathon run in Australia is still Hailemaryam Kiros’s 2:06:06 from Sydney last year, only 14 seconds quicker than the national record of 2:06:20 Haftu Strintzos set on the Gold Coast in July.

The race dates back to Nov. 5, 1978, when a little over 2,000 runners took part and Bill Scott, an Olympic 10,000m finalist, won in 2:21:04, six years to the day before Kipchoge was born. Anyone who completes 10 Melbourne Marathons becomes a Spartan and gets a singlet of their own, and after last year’s race there were more than 1,800 of them.

How to Watch

The race will be live streamed through the official Nike Melbourne Marathon Festival app, which also tracks individual runners, and shown on big screens at Federation Square. For anyone watching from the roadside, the organizers have set up four spectator hubs: Federation Square, Run Club HQ on St Kilda Road at Victoria Barracks, Lakeside Live at Albert Park Lake on Sunday only, and the Home Straight at the MCG and Yarra Park, where spectators can get into the stadium for free during race hours.

After Melbourne, the four races still to come on the tour, in Europe, North America, Asia and Antarctica, are expected in 2027 and do not have dates yet.