Course de l'Escalade 2026

The Course de l'Escalade fills Geneva’s streets each December with road races, walkers, children’s events, elite fields, and thousands of locals in costume. It is an athletics festival as much as a race series, with amateurs and professionals sharing the same weekend and entries now capped around the 60,000 mark. Since 1990, it has ranked as the largest event of its kind in Switzerland, and most runners come from the Geneva region. The program has grown from a straightforward road race into a busy set of formats, including mixed races, children’s races, walking and nordic walking categories, elite races, a relay, and the FlexiMix option where runners can decide mid-race whether to run two or three laps. The races run through central Geneva, with the finish at Parc des Bastions and sections dropping into the lower streets while brass bands play. The most distinctive part is La Marmite, a non-ranked 3.6 km run built for costumes and celebration rather than finishing times. That tradition developed gradually after early editions had almost no dressed-up runners, then became formal with La Marmite, which gave families, friends, and informal groups a place in the event. Recent Marmite fields have included rabbits, dinosaurs, chocolate bars, cartoon characters, Tic-Tac boxes, and luminous clouds. The name links back to Geneva’s Escalade story and the famous “Mère Royaume” episode, so the race sits between sport, local history, and a city party.