The Las Vegas Marathon will run down the Strip again on January 10, 2027, race producer Brooksee announced this week. It is the first time the city has hosted a major 26.2-mile race along Las Vegas Boulevard since 2019, and registration is already open at vegasmarathon.com.
The new course starts and finishes at The STRAT, the tower at the north end of the Strip. Runners head south from there, past the casinos that define the skyline, swing through the LED canopy at the Fremont Street Experience downtown, and pass through Springs Preserve, the cultural and botanical site west of downtown. A half marathon and a 7.02-mile race, named for the local 702 area code, share the morning.
“Las Vegas doesn’t do anything halfway, and neither do we,” Phil Dumontet, the CEO of Brooksee, said in a statement. “We didn’t just build a race course, we built an experience the city would be proud to put its name on. From the Strip to downtown, every mile is designed to feel electric, unforgettable, and uniquely Vegas.”
The Strip itself has not been quiet. The Rock ‘n’ Roll Running Series, owned for years by Ironman subsidiary Competitor Group, has held an evening half marathon, 10K and 5K down Las Vegas Boulevard since 2009. The full marathon distance is what dropped off. The Rock ‘n’ Roll marathon ran for the last time in 2019. The 2020 and 2021 events were canceled during the pandemic, and the 26.2 never came back.
The Las Vegas Marathon name itself goes back further. The race was founded in 1967 by Hank Greenspun, the editor of the Las Vegas Sun, and ran on a string of courses around the valley before moving onto the Strip in 2005. It was folded into the Rock ‘n’ Roll series four years later.
Brooksee, founded in 2012, picked the Las Vegas Marathon name back up in 2024. Its first two editions did not go anywhere near the Strip. The 2025 race, held on October 26, started high in Kyle Canyon on Mt. Charleston and ran downhill into the valley. Fast course, scenic course, but not the destination spectacle Las Vegas runners had been waiting on. If Vegas is going on the bucket list, it is worth weighing it against the rest of the best marathons in the US and the most scenic races on the planet.
The 2027 route changes that, and it took some doing. Brooksee credits extensive conversations with the City of Las Vegas, Clark County and local stakeholders for getting the road closures across the line. Shutting the Strip for a full 26.2 miles is a serious ask in a city that does not stop.
The date is part of the pitch too. January 10 should mean morning temperatures in the 50s, friendlier than the October and November windows earlier Las Vegas marathons used, when the desert could still cook a slow runner. The 7.02-mile distance gives anyone not ready for a half a way into race day, which makes it a sensible target for first-timers still working through a beginner marathon training plan or our couch to marathon progression.
Brooksee also produces the Portland Marathon, the Phoenix Marathon, the Mesa Marathon and the REVEL Race Series. Whether it can deliver a closed-Strip marathon at the scale of the old Rock ‘n’ Roll weekends, which drew tens of thousands of participants at their peak, is the real question for January. For context on what that scale looks like, see our list of the biggest marathons in the US.
