By Mathias Eichler
Episode 354 with Doug Mayer:
The 2026 Finals of the UTMB World Series are upon us and all of Chamonix is buzzing. Heck, the whole trail world is buzzing with excitement, anticipation, and nervousness. UTMB is big and important and as it moves our sport moves. Doug Mayer from Run the Alps lives in town and is in a perfect position to know what is happening inside and outside the organization, the town, and the sport as a whole. I’m here to chat with him about the logistical, political, and business side of it all.
Re-upping this as I can’t seem to find it in the ECC archives. Here’s what’s at stake for the 2026 UTMB Finals and what runners can take home for placing on the podium of one of the World Series Finals, UTMB, CCC, and OCC:
| RANK | UTMB | CCC | OCC |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | €20,000 | 13,000€ | 13,000€ |
| 2 | €12,000 | €7,500 | €7,500 |
| 3 | €8,000 | €5,000 | €5,000 |
| 4 | €6,000 | €3,500 | €3,500 |
| 5 | €4,000 | €2,500 | €2,500 |
| 6 | €3,000 | €2,000 | €2,000 |
| 7 | €2,000 | €1,500 | €1,500 |
| 8 | €1,500 | €1,000 | €1,000 |
| 9 | €1,500 | €1,000 | €1,000 |
| 10 | €1,500 | €1,000 | €1,000 |
Total is prize money is: €271,000 for women+men combined. Seems to be unchanged from 2025.
Social runs are brand activations, and Oak, the mountain community app is on the case.
Side note: UTMB asked brands to refrain from hosting runs during race week, how’s that going?
Another BIG news story I have not gotten from the official UTMB press office but via third party media. Here’s Jonathan Turner for Run247:
Anti-doping controls will be doubled at the 2026 HOKA UTMB Mont-Blanc next week – with testing expanded beyond the elites to runners across all races and age-group categories.
Will we be getting countless blog posts and tell-all Instagram reels from influencers for this one too?
Not what we want to hear and see, but health comes first, Kilian Jornet decided – last minute – to not run UTMB this year and instead get his doctors take a better look at his bum knee, including the possibility of surgery to fix it.
Just yesterday I wrote in a private chat group something to the effect of wanting to gather the pre-race analysis and predictions from all trail media accounts and see after the races how their race predictions had faired. With Kiki out, a clear favorite at any race he’s on the starting list, how many pre-recorded podcasts and written blog posts are now outdated already?
On Meta Endurance’s Instagram account:
We went through every published entry list for UTMB Mont-Blanc 2026. Here’s who’s actually showing up in Chamonix.
6,124 entrants across the six individual races, from 97 countries.
Even if you take into account that they didn’t include the PTL race (which only had a couple hundred starters last year) this number, if correct would me an overall reduction in field size by over 40% across all distances. In 2025 there were 10,772 starters according to my numbers pulled from the UTMB Live site. Further, I have access to a 2026 entry list for all races and it shows over 11,000 registered across all distances – on par with last year’s numbers.
So, I wager their numbers are horseshit.
New book alert by the man who never sleeps:
Beyond Endurance by Kilian Jornet, the Catalan professional long-distance trail runner and ski mountaineer widely considered one of the greatest mountain athletes of all time, is a first-person visual and written account of an extraordinary Alpine undertaking. In 2024, Jornet made international headlines by summiting eighty-two peaks over thirteen thousand feet in just nineteen days, smashing the previous record by three days and traversing the Alps at a pace never before achieved.
Link to Bookshop.org US and UK, Amazon (Affiliate links, thanks for supporting ECC).
With less than a week before race week UTMB just announced some last minute changes to the OCC and MCC courses. An email was sent to all registered runners with the following information:
Please note that the last part of the course between Argentière and Chamonix has been modified. This modification does not change the overall course profile, including the total distance and elevation gain. From Les Chosalets, athletes will follow the Arve River along the south side of the Chamonix Valley, then climb the Petit Balcon Sud trails before descending via the traditional UTMB descent to Chamonix city centre.
The updated routes can be found on the UTMB website for:
No word on what prompted the changes. But it seems that after the bigger OCC course changes earlier in the year, which had them drop the entire climb to La Flegere they are now rerouting the course back over to Balcon Sud – still no La Flegere, and still no Chalet de la Floria, which is a bummer. But it brings runners back into town on the same route as in previous years. (I hope I am reading this correctly, please let me know if I am mistaken.)
Collecting here the various schedules and announcements from podcasts and media creators on their upcoming coverage of trail running’s biggest week:
There’s more, there will be more, there always is more coverage… and I’ll add more here as I find it – if you find any announcements, send them my way. And just to say it one more time: I am sitting far away from all the hype in Chamonix with a massive amount of FOMO, ugh.
Nonetheless, I want to highlight Trail Talk‘s UTMB coverage (I got a first sneak peek and don’t want to give anything away, but the lineup looks incredible and fresh – updated now). Be sure follow Aaron Shimmons on Instagram and subscribe to his podcast to get all the news and banter right in your face as soon as it’s released.
UTMB, just before their Finals next week (can you believe this is really happening next week already… I am so jealous to not be there, and also so freaking excited!!!) updated their live race tracking page. I linked here to the UTMB one, but it seems this is rolled out to all races (I found out when gathering the results for Boréalys Mont-Tremblant from last weekend).
Very curious to see how this will behave in real world usage – I’ve only been able to play with it for races that have already concluded.
I have word in with UTMB to see if any official announcement will be coming.
This info was just shared with me by my friend and “reporter on the ground” in Chamonix Doug Mayer, from Run the Alps:
UTMB has just sent out a note to all brands and organizations planning on “activating” during UTMB week that group runs are prohibited/discouraged while the actual races are going on. This is in response to the mayor office’s concern of overcrowding. And beyond that apparently last year there was some mix up with actual runners – who were running one of the UTMB races, with a bib – who got confused by the crowds running part of a brand’s group run and were led off course.
More on this in an upcoming episode of Singletrack where Doug and I chat about recent developments, changes, and announcements coming from ‘Maison UTMB’ in response to local politics changes, public sentiment in the valley, and ahead of yet another record-shattering UTMB Finals week.
I got no link to any official communication, will add if I get my hands on something.
Episode 353 with Etienne Rodriguez:
After years of many calls and more meetings I finally get to pin down Etienne Rodriguez, managing director of the Skyrunner World Series, and hit record for a chat about the history behind, the business of, and most of all the vision for the Skyrunner World Series. The Series just returned to U.S. soil for the first time at Beast of Big Creek and we chat about what this all means and where this might take us in the coming years.
The Skyrunner World Series title sponsor Merrell sponsored this post on iRunfar highlighting their athletes who ran Beast a couple of weeks ago (I wouldn’t normally link to ‘sponsored content’ but this one mentions Beast, so I of course had to):
On August 1, 2026, after nearly a decade of absence, the global circuit returned to the U.S. with the Beast of Big Creek on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, creating a rare opportunity for local runners to line up alongside international skyrunning specialists.
…
During the 2026 Beast of Big Creek on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, American runners had a chance to experience the style of racing that has captivated mountain runners across Europe and beyond for decades.
Still sitting in the afterglow of this amazing event… and already scheming for next year.
Sticking with the business updates theme here for today.
Jeremy Gray for PetaPixel:
GoPro has announced its second-quarter financial results and some of the core numbers are dire.
…
GoPro said in April that it would lay off about 23 percent of its workforce this year amid excess costs. The company disclosed the following month that it was evaluating its options, including contemplating a potential sale.
This doesn’t look good. You’re the best product in your niche and you still can’t make the business work.
I had missed that, but Tudor isn’t the only “non-GPS/luxury watch brand” sponsoring trail. Unsurprisingly the Matterhorn Ultraks event is sponsored by Norqain. I say unsurprisingly because of course a trail event happening in and around Zermatt would have a watch sponsor, and of course, it’s a Swiss watch brand.
We are proud to be the Official Timekeeper of the Matterhorn Ultraks in Zermatt, Switzerland. The race in the Swiss mountains not only offers striking trails but also breathtaking views along the way. Matterhorn Ultraks offers competitors exceptional courses of various distances and difficulty levels so every NORQAINER can find what fits their skills and level.
Norqain even has/had a limited edition watch, the ‘Adventure Matterhorn Ultraks‘ celebrating their partnership. (The watch is already sold out, not sure how long that partnership has been going?)
Which then, of course brings me to the very important point worth asking – myself and you: which watch company should become the official partner of Beast of Big Creek? Anyone got ideas?
Tiffany Montgomery at Shop Eat Surf Outdoor has the story:
Mammut Sports Group AG, the Swiss mountain performance brand founded in 1862, announced that CPE has signed an agreement to acquire the company from Jacobs Capital.
No article ever talks about if these equity ownership deals are ever good for the brand. Yes, in some ways, maybe it’s better for the brand to sell itself, keep the employees – for now – and continue operating and making money. And maybe if I’d be in a position like this I’d do the same thing: rather sell myself than go under. But man, in this global game of endless ownership shuffle, no brand stands for anything anymore. Any sense of place is completely lost.
Publicly traded Wolverine World Wide Inc. owns Merrell, title sponsor of the Skyrunner World Series, and they just had their Q2 earnings call (from the transcript):
In trail run, Merrell continues to entrench its position with its title sponsorship of the Skyrunner World Series, composed of elite trail running races around the globe in locations such as China, Japan, France, Italy, Spain, Chile, Argentina and right here in the U.S. Merrell-sponsored athletes currently claim seven spots in the top 15 men’s and women’s standings, including the top four ranked men in the series. In the marketplace, the brand’s premier franchise, the Agility Peak 6, continued to gain traction, up double digits globally versus the previous model’s comparable first season.
(Emphasis mine.)
Merrell grew 11.1% over last quarter. That shake out run we did must’ve gone well, I’d say.
Announced today (link to the PDF policy document) and oh boy do I feel for the folks managing their social media today:
Everyone deserves to know they are welcome before deciding whether to apply to the lottery for a chance to run in our event, so today we’re sharing a new policy on transgender and non-binary athlete inclusion.
Kudos to the team in Silverton for getting this one right… and even leaving room to grow. That’s how it’s done.
Shared by Erdinger last week:
Werner Brombach, owner of the private brewery ERDINGER Weißbräu, passed away on Saturday at the age of 86 in the circle of his family after a short illness. The “Bräu von Erding” led the brewery, founded in 1886, in the second generation and made the ERDINGER Weißbier and the city of Erding known worldwide.
Still my all time favorite beer, even though I believe it tastes a lot better when drinking it back home. Nonetheless, I will find a few good bottles their original Hefeweizen one here and will enjoy ti in Werner’s honor before the summer is over. What a life, what a legacy to have built and leave behind. Prost!
For the upcoming Finals in Chamonix UTMB announced a new campaign that can be summarized to the US crowd succinctly with their version of “Leave no Trace”:
Runners, supporters, spectators: everyone has a part to play. The places we love, we protect. The people who bring them to life, we respect. A responsibility we all share. Here are the actions that come with it.
This is actually, un-sarcastically, a really good thing. UTMB draws thousands of folks from other parts of the world to its trails and mountains. It’s paramount to “teach the ways of the locals” as it comes to respecting the environment and the neighbors. And I’m not saying this because “foreigners are savages” or whatever xenophobic crap one might think, but when away from home, especially with a huge goal in mind, surrounded by likeminded folks one can sometimes forget themselves. It’s easier to leave the proverbial dropped litter if it falls not in your own backyard.
A couple of weeks ago with international runners lining up at ‘Beast’ I stressed the importance of staying on the trails, especially in the high alpine region. This is something that’s (mostly) pretty well understood over here among trail runners, but there are regions in the world where there are fewer defined trails on rocky terrain and folks are allowed to just sort of cut across. I wasn’t going to get in trouble with the National Forest Service over this and possibly lose my permit for the coming years. So, I very much understand where UTMB is coming from with these announcements.
Volunteers, residents and staff bring this event to life. They deserve the same kindness we give the runners.
Reminding everyone that in the end, while a lot might be on the line, we’re humans, we’re people, we’re brothers and sisters, and that is what matters. What a perfect message for UTMB to have their Finals imbue out into the rest of the world.
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