The Zurich Marató Barcelona 2025, chosen by the RFEA to host the 87th Spanish Marathon Championships, for the ninth time in its history

Barcelona’s marathon brings back the most important national competition of its distance after having been held on its course for the last time in 2001, more than two decades ago.

On 16 March, the Zurich Marató Barcelona 2025 will also be the 87th Spanish Marathon Championships. This is what the Royal Spanish Athletics Federation (RFEA) has decided on Wednesday so that, in the same edition in which the Barcelona Marathon is on its way to break its own participation record with more than 20,000 registrations already sold out, the most important national event of this distance will also be celebrated. 

In this way, the Zurich Marató Barcelona takes over the baton from the Zurich Marató de Sevilla, which has celebrated this championship last February 18, 2024, having as winners Ibrahim Chakir (02:07:48h) and Ester Navarrete (02:24:40h), sealing with these marks their pre-selection for the Olympic Games in Paris that took place this summer. For Barcelona, the 2025 edition will be its 9th time as Spanish Marathon Championships (1928, 1930, 1933, 1935, 1954, 1955, 1992 and 2001), being the last time in 2001, more than two decades ago (it will be 24 years ago). The most notable in its history are the inaugural event in 1928 and 1992, when the Olympic Games were held in the city. It is also worth mentioning that, although this will be the ninth Spanish Marathon Championships to be held in Barcelona, the figure corresponds to the men’s Championships, as the women’s edition of the Spanish Championships started in 1981, coming to Barcelona for the first time in 1992.  

In 2025, the joint edition of the 46th Zurich Marató Barcelona and the 87th Spanish Marathon Championships will start from Passeig de Gràcia, with the finish line at Arc de Triomf. The renewed circuit of this 2024 Barcelona Marathon will be repeated, flatter, faster and more monumental than the previous one, with a reduction of 30 metres of positive slope, and that makes the Barcelona Marathon route one of the ones with less curves in the world. Also, this ninth edition of the top national distance event in Barcelona makes it the second of the five biggest cities in Spain to hold this Championships on more occasions, only behind Zaragoza (14) and ahead of Seville (8), Valencia (6) and Madrid (3); as well as being the 14th time in history that this event will take place in Catalonia, having previously been held in venues such as Granollers, Reus, Igualada, Lleida or Manresa.