Everything you need to know about the European Running Championships, Belgrade 2027
Belgrade hosts the second edition of the European Running Championships in April 2027, offering recreational runners the rare chance to race a marathon, half marathon or 10km on the same course as Europe's elite – with a new Country Ranking giving every entrant a stake in a Great Britain team score.
Amateur runners will get the chance to race the same course, on the same weekend, as some of Europe's best distance runners when the European Running Championships return for a second edition in Belgrade on April 17-18, 2027.
The European Running Championships is a relatively new addition to the athletics calendar, created in 2025 when European Athletics moved the marathon and half marathon out of the traditional track and field European Championships and bundled them together with the 10km into a standalone, biennial road-running event. The format's defining feature is that it is genuinely open: rather than a mass event running alongside a closed elite championship, recreational runners from anywhere in the world can enter and run the exact same course, at the same time, as the athletes competing for European medals.
The inaugural edition was held in Brussels and Leuven in April 2025, drawing 323 elite athletes from 45 nations alongside thousands of amateur entrants. Belgrade, hosted by the Belgrade Marathon and the Serbian Athletics Federation, takes over for the second edition, with organisers targeting more than 25,000 participants across the weekend.
Three championship distances are on offer: the 10km and half marathon both start on Saturday, April 17 (at 9am and 6pm respectively), with the marathon following on Sunday, April 18 at 8am. There is also a half marathon relay for teams of four.
The course runs through the heart of the Serbian capital, starting at Republic Square and taking in landmarks including the Nikola Tesla Museum, Sava Square, the banks of the Sava river, and Kalemegdan Park, before finishing back at the main square. The event also marks the 40th anniversary of the Belgrade Marathon itself and will serve as a curtain-raiser to that summer's EXPO 2027 exhibition in the city.
Belgrade arrives as host with an unusually strong track record for major athletics events – it is the only city to have hosted the European Athletics Indoor Championships (2017), the World Athletics Indoor Championships (2022), the European Cross Country Championships (2013) and the World Cross Country Championships (2024).
France dominated the inaugural edition, topping the marathon team standings and taking gold in both the men's 10km, through Yann Schrub, and the men's half marathon, where Jimmy Gressier won by 83 seconds.
There was late drama in the men's marathon as Italy's Iliass Aouani produced a surprise win in 2:09:05, edging out two Israeli runners, while Italy's Nadia Battocletti, already an Olympic 10,000m silver medallist, added gold in the women's 10km. The women's marathon went to Spain's Fatima Ouhaddou Nafie, and there was a home celebration in the women's half marathon as Belgium's Chloé Herbiet won ahead of compatriot Juliette Thomas.
New for this edition is a Country Ranking, which extends the team element of the championships beyond the elite athletes to every amateur runner taking part. Under the regulations, the net finishing times of the top 25 runners from each European Athletics member federation – elite and mass-participation runners combined – are aggregated for each race and each gender, with the lowest combined time winning. Countries fielding fewer than 25 classified finishers will not be ranked. In practice, that means any British runner entering in Belgrade will be contributing not just to their own result, but potentially to a Great Britain team score against the rest of Europe.
Great Britain and Northern Ireland sent a 13-strong team to the 2025 championships, led by triathlon-turned-track Olympic medallist Beth Potter in the 10km alongside Phoebe Anderson, Sarah Astin, Amelia Quirk and Welsh duo Verity Ockenden and Jenny Nesbitt, while Hannah Irwin was the sole GB&NI representative in the half marathon, finishing 16th. Selection for Belgrade 2027 is still some way off, but the event's open-entry format means the majority of British interest will likely come from club and recreational runners rather than the elite team alone.
Registration for recreational runners is already open, with pricing on a rising scale as the event approaches – currently in the "Midway Pass" window (until the end of November) at €70 for the marathon, €60 for the half marathon and €55 for the 10km, before prices increase again in December. Full details on distances, routes and entry requirements are available on the event's runner information page.
The event's own strapline for recreational entrants, carried over from the Leuven edition, is "Run With The Champions" – a fair summary of what makes the format distinctive: for one weekend in Belgrade, club runners and continental medallists will share the same start line, the same course and the same finish straight.
👉 Register for the European Running Championships, Belgrade 2027
