Gerda Steyn Chases a Fifth Comrades Title as 21,633 Take On the Up Run
The 99th Comrades Marathon runs this Sunday, 14 June: an 85.8km up run from Durban to Pietermaritzburg. Gerda Steyn chases a fifth title and fourth straight, the men's race is wide open, and a new three-group staggered start debuts in front of 21,633 starters.
The race
The Ultimate Human Race is back. This Sunday, 14 June 2026, the 99th Comrades Marathon sends 21,633 starters from Durban's City Hall into the dark for the long climb to Pietermaritzburg — an up run of 85.777 km, which the organisers note is the shortest up run in recent history. Nobody on Polly Shortts will be calling it short.
The field tells its own story: from a 22,000 entry cap, 95.37 percent of entrants qualified — the highest qualification rate in more than a decade. This year's slogan is "Ska Fela Moya" — Setswana for "Don't give up" — which is less a slogan than an instruction for roughly kilometre 70 onwards.
Conditions look close to perfect: around 15°C at the Durban start and a top of about 21°C in Pietermaritzburg.
The women's race
The women's race is a question with a famous answer waiting to happen. Gerda Steyn starts as overwhelming favourite for a fifth Comrades title and a fourth in a row — she holds the up-run record, has not been beaten at Comrades since her breakthrough win in 2019, and arrives fresh off victory at this year's Two Oceans.
If anyone is going to interrupt history, the candidates are Kenya's Shelmith Muriuki, 2022 champion Alexandra Morozova, and South Africa's Irvette van Zyl — all podium-class runners facing the hardest assignment in ultrarunning: beating Steyn on a course she owns.
The men's race
The men's race is the opposite: genuinely wide open. Piet Wiersma defends the up-run title he won in 2024. Tete Dijana — a three-time down-run champion — is chasing the one thing missing from his Comrades CV: an up-run victory. Around them circle former champions Edward Mothibi and Bongmusa Mthembu, the fast-rising George Kusche, and Onalenna Khonkhobe.
And then there is the wildcard: Aleksandr Sorokin, the reigning World 100km champion and one of the greatest distance runners alive, making his Comrades debut. Flat-course brilliance has historically translated unevenly to Comrades' hills — which is exactly what makes his first attempt unmissable.
The winners' cheques have grown too: the total purse is up 10 percent to R8.2 million, with R925,000 for each race winner.
New this year
Two big operational changes debut on Sunday:
- A staggered start. Instead of one mass 05:30 gun, the field leaves in three groups — 05:00, 05:15, and 05:30 — each getting the full 12 hours. Less congestion through Durban's early kilometres, and a fairer race against the clock for the back of the field.
- Traffic-light cutoffs. The intermediate cutoff system has been rebuilt with colour-coded warnings, so runners know whether they are safely ahead, marginal, or in danger at each checkpoint — rather than discovering it the hard way.
Why you should watch
If you are new to running, Comrades is the best television the sport produces — not at the front, but at the back. Watch the start in the dark, then make sure you are watching again at 17:00 as the final-hour runners come down Pietermaritzburg's streets, and at the final gun when the field is stopped mid-stride at 12 hours. Nothing else in sport looks like it.
And remember what every one of those 21,633 runners has in common: a first 5K, once. The distance between your walk-run Tuesday and the Comrades start line is just years of consistency — the same consistency our guides are built around. If watching lights a fire, channel it: find a race near you and put a start line of your own on the calendar.
The race runs from 05:00 on Sunday morning. South Africans know where they'll be.