A regional city will stage its first marathon this weekend, closing a project that took eight years to bring together.
The event is built around local charities, community groups and businesses rather than elite competition alone. Organisers expect thousands of participants and their families to spend time in the city across the weekend.
Image: Geelong waterfront, east view, by DXR via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
When the race runs and where
The marathon starts at 7am on Sunday 20 September 2026. It begins at Nyaal Banyul Geelong Convention and Event Centre, 80 Western Beach Road, and finishes at Steampacket Gardens on Eastern Beach Road.
The course covers the standard marathon distance of 42.195 kilometres, with a cut-off time of 6 hours 40 minutes. It passes through the Kardinia Park stadium precinct and takes in Corio Bay and the Eastern Beach foreshore.
The race is the headline event of the Geelong Running Festival, which runs across 18 to 20 September 2026. The full program and entry details are listed on the Geelong Running Festival site.
Race timing was planned to encourage competitors and their families to stay beyond race day. Organisers say that benefits hotels, restaurants, cafes and other Geelong businesses.
The start line sits on the edge of the central city, which means most participants can walk or catch public transport to the event rather than driving. That choice also pushes visitors through the retail and dining precincts on the way in and out.
Eight years from idea to starting gun
Festival director Lee Troop, a former elite runner, has worked on the event for eight years. He began around 2018, when running had not yet seen the participation surge of recent years.
The Surf Coast Times reported that the traffic management plan went through six iterations before approval. Troop said the project was the hardest thing he had attempted. "This is the hardest thing I have ever done, building something this big from scratch," he said.
He also described the financial exposure. The event required a $1.5 million investment, and he said the risk extended beyond money. "There was a lot of money that I would lose, but at the same time there was a lot of my reputation that would be affected," he told the paper.
Sustaining a project across eight years is unusual for a community event. Troop began planning well before the current running boom, which meant the original assumptions about entry numbers and sponsorship had to be rebuilt several times.
The community side of the festival
Local causes sit at the centre of the event. The festival has 13 local charity partners, and registered runners have already raised $126,000, with about $70,000 going directly to those organisations.
Organisers have kept entry open to groups often left out of mass participation events. Their initiatives include a free kids' race, free entry for all-abilities participants and a wheelchair race. The festival also supported the creation of Geelong's first Indigenous running group, Djilang Runners.
Runners' discarded clothing will be collected for distribution by the Lazarus Community Centre. Three-time Olympian Nathan Deakes will present medals to children and all-abilities competitors.
Troop said the community element was the point of the whole exercise. "We've built this community within a community where everyone's got everyone's back," he said. "This is not a one-man show. This is not about me."
The race program across the weekend
Community, children's and all-abilities races are held on Saturday 19 September. Sunday carries the marathon along with a half marathon, a community race and a wheelchair half marathon.
The festival now includes six races across two days and has attracted nearly 5,500 participants. Community ambassador Kathleen Whitehead said the course would give runners a chance to run on grass before heading out to Point Henry.
Distances vary by event, and entrants should confirm the details for their chosen race rather than assume every option covers the same ground. Spectators planning to watch should check road closure times, because a course through a city centre is closed in stages as the field moves.
Why the event matters to the city
Geelong is one of Victoria's fastest-growing regional cities, and organisers want the festival to strengthen its standing as a host for major events. Troop has been explicit about that ambition. "I want Geelong to be a destination place where we're known for arts, we're known for sport, we're known for music," he said.
The wider region has been adding sporting infrastructure to match that ambition. Every Suburb recently covered a regional tennis centre proposal nearby, which follows a similar argument about using facilities to draw events and visitors.
A first-time marathon also tests local capacity. Road closures, spectator movement and participant logistics all lean on council services and volunteers, and the six-version traffic plan reflects how much coordination a course through a city centre requires.
For local businesses, the value lies in the pattern of the weekend rather than a single morning. Participants registering, collecting bibs and travelling with family generate spending before and after the race itself, which is why organisers deliberately built a two-day program rather than a single start line.
Troop said he wants the event to be repeatable, describing a foundation designed to last rather than a one-off. He said the event had already helped build a wider running community in the region, and he hopes those networks will support the festival in future years.
Geelong and the Bellarine in context
The festival sits within the Greater Geelong local government area, which covers the city and surrounding towns. Sport and events already form part of the region's identity, with major facilities and coastal venues drawing visitors year round.
Holding a first marathon gives the city a reference point for future bids. Other regional centres that host mass participation events often find the second and third editions easier to fund, because sponsors and volunteers can see the scale of the operation.
For a wider view of how Victorian towns and regions are profiled, see the Victoria local guide.
Works Cited
Sinclair, Tahlia. "The Eight Year Journey behind Geelong's First Marathon." Surf Coast Times, 18 Sept. 2026, https://timesnewsgroup.com.au/surfcoasttimes/news/the-eight-year-journey-behind-geelongs-first-marathon/.
Geelong Running Festival. "Geelong Running Festival." Geelong Running Festival, n.d., https://geelongrunningfestival.com.au/.
DXR. "Geelong Waterfront, East View." Wikimedia Commons, 18 Feb. 2023, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Geelong_Waterfront,_east_view_20230218_1.jpg.