It’s official, the Geelong Running Festival is on it’s way!
After seven years of planning, the event has been locked in, with the countdown now on to September 2026.
Two-time Olympian Lee Troop has been working hard over the years to get the event up and running, announcing on Friday an 8km route and half and full marathon events.
“There’s a lot of passionate people here in Geelong who have travelled all over the country and all over the world to go to marathons, so to have something in their own home town, the hype is real, everyone’s extremely excited,” he said.
“The courses are amazing. It’ll take in everything from North Geelong all the way through to Point Henry, including our wonderful waterfront, CBD, and also Kardinia Park.”
In addition to celebrating different parts of our region, Troop said the Festival will look to give back to the community.
“Not only do we celebrate our pride and passion that we have for Geelong, but it’s also going to be a great way for us to fundraise for local charities. We have the estimated target of trying to achieve around $250,000 for as many local charities as we can,” he said.
“The benefit of the event is that people can nominate their own charities, and they can fundraise, and they can form teams. We don’t want to isolate with celebrating and looking at a couple, we want to try to give back as much as we can to every charity that we have here in Geelong.”
Registrations will open at 7am on Sunday, exactly one year out from the event on 20 September 2026, with locals encouraged to keep their eyes peeled for more news to come.
“We’ll over coming months make numerous announcements, particularly to our ambassador program and how people can be involved in that, and then also the addition of a kids race and an all abilities race that will take place,” Troop said.
The courses can be found at the Festival’s website.
