By Adnaan Mohamed
The Comrades Marathon has started the countdown to its biggest chapter yet.
The 2027 Down Run, on Sunday, 13 June, will celebrate the 100th edition of the Ultimate Human Race, with the finish moving to the Kings Park Rugby Precinct in Durban and the entry cap rising to a record 28,000 runners.
The centenary campaign, The Greatest Story Ever Run, was unveiled at Kings Park on Wednesday, alongside a special 100th-edition logo.
The slogan, selected from more than 200 submissions from the Comrades community, neatly captures an event whose history has been built kilometre by gruelling kilometre since 1921.
For CMA General Manager Alain Dalais, the centenary is an opportunity for a new generation to add its own footprints to an extraordinary legacy.
“The Comrades Marathon has such a rich history, from the pioneers of the 1920s who ran to pay tribute to their comrades in arms from the Great War, to the hundreds of thousands of runners who have shaped the legacy of this phenomenal event by adding their own stories to Comrades Marathon lore over the past century.”
“Now in 2027, we get to add a glorious 100th chapter to this story as we celebrate the centenary of one of the world’s greatest running events, and we invite our 2027 entrants to honour those who came before them while contributing to this next chapter of the race.”
The numbers surrounding the race are almost as imposing as the hills.
The 28,000-entry ceiling will make 2027 the largest Comrades field ever, surpassing the 24,172 entries recorded for the 2025 Down Run and the 24,636 entries for the 2019 Up Run.
CMA Race Director Sue Forge says the bigger field has been backed by detailed operational planning.
“While we want as many runners as responsibly possible to experience this historic centenary race, the safety of our participants, volunteers, spectators and communities remains our foremost priority.”
Traffic management, transport, crowd control and venue operations will all receive additional attention as the CMA prepares to squeeze another sizeable slice of humanity onto the road.
The Kings Park move should provide breathing room at the business end of the race. Forge says the sports fields will offer more space for the finish area and race village, with improved runner flow, medical services, recovery, hospitality, transport and post-race operations.
The route is expected to measure approximately 91km, although the official distance will only be confirmed after formal measurement following roadworks. The 2025 Down Run measured 89.98km, while the longest Comrades route was 92km in 1971.
There is another welcome piece of news for aspiring centurions: entry fees will remain unchanged.
Entries open on Tuesday, 25 August 2026, through three phases. Green Number and Yellow Number athletes receive first access, followed by CMA Members and then general entries.
For CMA Chairperson Mark Leathers, the launch is merely the starting gun.
“Our 2027 race will be the largest edition of the Comrades Marathon yet, and we know that this launch is just the beginning of an incredibly exciting build-up to the next Down Run, and the start of an exciting next century of the race.”
The 2027 Down Run starts at 05:00 from Pietermaritzburg City Hall, with a 12-hour time limit and the finish at Kings Park.
A century of sweat, sacrifice, heartbreak and heroics has brought Comrades to this point.
Now 28,000 runners get the chance to leave their footprints on history.
The greatest story ever run is ready for another chapter.
