There are 4,561 people on earth who have finished all seven World Marathon Majors. Eliud Kipchoge is one of them.
If one city in South Africa has a good day in May, he could stand alone.
The 2026 Sanlam Cape Town Marathon, scheduled for May 24, is in the final stretch of a years-long bid to become Africa’s first Abbott World Marathon Major — the eighth race to join a series that currently includes Tokyo, Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago, Sydney, and New York. Kipchoge has already run them all. If Cape Town gets in, and he crosses the finish line, he becomes the first person ever to hold eight stars.
No one else in the 4,561 is close. Kipchoge would be in a category entirely of his own making.
What a “Star” Actually Means
The Abbott World Marathon Majors star system is simple in concept and brutally hard in practice. Finish one Major, earn one star. Finish all seven, earn the Seven Star medal — one of the most coveted achievements in distance running. As of the 2025 New York City Marathon, just 4,561 runners across 109 countries have done it, out of the hundreds of millions who have ever laced up a pair of running shoes.
To put the scale in perspective: the average Seven Star finisher is 54 years and 2 months old when they complete the journey. The average finish time across all seven races is 4:08:37. Only three people have ever done the whole thing twice.
It takes years. For most runners, it takes decades.
Kipchoge finished his seven-star journey on November 2, 2025, crossing the finish line of the New York City Marathon in 2:14:36 — 17th place, third marathon of the calendar year. He is already the fastest six-star finisher in history. Now, one door remains. But that door only opens if Cape Town walks through its own first.
The Long Road to Major Status
Cape Town’s bid to join the World Marathon Majors began in 2022. It was not a short process.
The AbbottWMM candidacy program requires races to meet strict, multi-year evaluation criteria covering operational excellence, elite athlete recruitment, anti-doping standards, race-day logistics, and mass participation. Cities don’t just apply and get in — they are assessed, repeatedly, over multiple years. Sydney went through the same process before being confirmed as the seventh Major in November 2024.
Cape Town passed its Stage 1 evaluation in October 2024, on its third attempt. AbbottWMM CEO Dawna Stone called it “continued impressive progress.” Race director Clark Gardner was more grounded: “The key to passing this stage was the collective effort from our team, the city, sponsors, service providers, participants and residents.”
Passing Stage 1 meant the race needed one more thing: a second consecutive pass of the evaluation criteria, to be completed at the 2025 race.
Then the wind came.
90 Minutes
The 2025 Sanlam Cape Town Marathon was canceled 90 minutes before its scheduled 6:15 a.m. start on October 19. Overnight gales had destroyed structures at the start line in Green Point. Emergency meetings ran through the night. The final call came at 4:45 a.m. All 24,000 registered runners found out via WhatsApp at 5:00 a.m.
It was the right call. It was also, for everyone involved, genuinely crushing.
“Ultimately a bigger force had the final say,” said Gardner. A hard thing to say after months of preparation. He said it anyway.
The cancellation didn’t just disappoint runners. It put Cape Town’s entire WMM candidacy on ice. Without a race to evaluate, Stage 2 couldn’t be completed. Three years of work, paused — by weather.
Abbott WMM responded generously. They confirmed that all finishers of the 2026 Cape Town Marathon will receive a provisional star — one that becomes fully official if the race passes its Stage 2 evaluation next May. Title sponsor Sanlam funded deferred entries for every 2025 runner into either 2026 or 2027.
“We look forward to being back in Cape Town in May next year to see both the runners, and the race, get over that finish line,” Stone said.
What Eight Stars Would Actually Mean
Here’s what’s easy to miss: the eight-star story isn’t just about Kipchoge. It’s about what Cape Town becoming a Major would signal to an entire continent.
Of the 4,561 people who hold Seven Star status, just 57 are from Africa. That’s 1.3% of the total, from a continent of 1.4 billion people — a continent that produces the majority of the world’s greatest elite marathon runners. Kenya and Ethiopia dominate podiums at every Major on the planet. And yet the participatory marathon culture, the one that creates Seven Star finishers, has largely happened elsewhere.
Cape Town joining the series wouldn’t just add a race to the map. It would put a Major on African soil for the first time — making the journey accessible to a continent that has always been at the edges of this particular club.
And if Kipchoge — who grew up in Kapsisiywa, Kenya, who has spent his career proving that African runners can be the best in the world — is the first person to finish eight of them, there’s a certain completeness to that. The man who inspired a generation of runners, making history on the continent that shaped him.
May 24, 2026
The ballot for the 2026 race is open. The event has a new date, a new season, and everything riding on a single evaluation. Gardner put it plainly: “We can’t wait to celebrate that collective victory with our incredible running community who’ve backed us every step of the way.”
If Cape Town passes, it becomes the eighth Major. The provisional stars become real. Thousands of runners who deferred from 2025 finally get their moment. The AbbottWMM Age Group World Championships take place on African soil. And Kipchoge, who has already announced Cape Town as the first stop of his seven-continent world tour, gets to stand at a finish line that nobody has ever stood at before.
Eight stars. First ever. On his home continent.
One race.
