World Marathon
Majors.

What the World Marathon Majors actually are

The World Marathon Majors series began in 2006 with five races: Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago, and New York City. Tokyo joined in 2013, forming the group of six that most runners still think of as "the majors." That lineup held for over a decade, until Sydney passed two separate assessment rounds and was confirmed as the seventh Major in November 2024, with its 2025 edition becoming the first to officially count.

Why the majors are not interchangeable

It is tempting to treat "run a major" as a single goal, but the seven courses ask for genuinely different things from a runner. Berlin, Chicago, and London are flat and fast, built for chasing a specific goal time. Boston, New York, and Sydney are hilly enough that course-specific strength work matters as much as raw fitness. Tokyo sits in between: flat and record-eligible, but guarded by one of the toughest lotteries in the sport. Training the same way for all seven is a mistake. Training for the specific demands of the one you are running next is not.

Flat and fast, or hilly and hard

If a fast goal time is the priority, Berlin, Chicago, and London are the three to target first. All three are flat, wide, and built to produce personal bests, which is why marathon world records tend to fall on one of these courses. Tokyo belongs in this group by terrain, but its lottery is the hardest to win of any major.

If the goal is the experience as much as the time, Boston, New York, and Sydney offer the harder, more varied courses: the Newton Hills and Heartbreak Hill in Boston, five boroughs and five bridges in New York, and the Harbour Bridge followed by a late Oxford Street climb in Sydney. None of them are course-record courses, and none of them are trying to be.

What the Six Star and Seven Star medal means

Runners who complete every race in the series earn recognition from Abbott World Marathon Majors, the organization that runs the program. It was called Six Star Finisher for the eleven years the series held at six races, and became Seven Star Finisher once Sydney's addition took effect in 2025. It is one of the most recognized achievements in recreational marathon running, precisely because completing all seven means training for, traveling to, and finishing races with genuinely different demands, not just running the same distance seven times.

How to train across different majors

The single biggest mistake in preparing for a major is training generically and hoping the course sorts itself out on race day. It will not. A Berlin-style block, heavy on marathon-pace tempo work, will leave a runner underprepared for Boston's downhill quad damage or New York's five bridges. A hill-heavy Boston block is largely wasted preparation for a flat, record-chasing Berlin attempt.

The base underneath all of it does not change. Every major, flat or hilly, still rewards a properly built aerobic base and a training week anchored around the long run. What changes on top of that base is the course-specific work, covered in detail on each race's own page above.