Abbott announced on Tuesday that every finisher of the 2026 Cape Town Marathon will receive a provisional star towards its major marathon star program because the 2025 race was cancelled during the evaluation to elevate it to possibly become the eighth major.
Just hours before it was scheduled to start on October 19, the Cape Town Marathon was cancelled due to severe high winds.
A bulk of the nearly 24,000 participants were already heading to the start area as the first wave was slayed to begin at 6:15 a.m. local time when the event was cancelled.
“Due to severe winds overnight that carried on into the early hours of the morning, the 2025 edition of the Sanlam Cape Town Marathon unfortunately had to be cancelled at short notice this morning,” organizers said in a statement at the time.
Hours earlier, an emergency meeting of city officials, including police and disaster preparedness teams — along with race organizers — was held to to discuss if the event could still proceed. But by that time, the start village suffered significant damage, with wind gusts escalating in Woodstock, which is about five miles into the race.
Race organizers were bidding for the race to become the next major marathon, like Sydney, and the cancellation impacted Cape Town from being properly evaluated by Abbott to see if it could meet the criteria of a large scale event.
“I would like to thank race director Clark Gardner and his team for their swift and brave actions under extreme pressure. I am also grateful to their sponsor, Sanlam, for standing by their runners,” AbbottWMM CEO Dawna Stone said in a statement. “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.”
And while participants in this year’s cancelled event were understandably disappointed in not running the course, race officials have agreed to provide sponsored entry for 2026 or 2027.
But the race will also be moved to May beginning in 2026, which could play in Cape Town’s favor if it passes its evaluation phase and would place four majors in the spring (alongside Tokyo, Boston and London) and four in the fall (Sydney, Berlin, Chicago and New York).
The provisional stars for all 2026 participants would then count toward Abbott’s marathon achievement program in the event that Cape Town is elevated to a major.
“We are ecstatic that, should we pass stage two in 2026, all Sanlam Cape Town Marathon finishers will receive an Abbott World Marathon Majors star,” Clark Gardner, CEO of Faces, the organizers of the Sanlam Cape Town Marathon said in a statement. “It’s a significant step toward becoming Africa’s first Major, and we can’t wait to celebrate that collective victory with our incredible running community who’ve backed us every step of the way.”
