Berlin Marathon

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First run in 1974 as a small race through the Grunewald forest in West Berlin, with a few hundred entrants. It moved into the city in 1981, starting from the meadow in front of the Reichstag with 3,486 runners from 30 nations and finishing by the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. On 30 September 1990, three days before formal German reunification, the course ran through the Brandenburg Gate for the first time, and the gate has framed the finish since. The course is a flat, wide, low-turn loop through the city centre and it is the fastest marathon course in history by the only measure that matters here: at least nine men's world records were set on it between 1998 and 2022, from Ronaldo da Costa's 2:06:05 to Eliud Kipchoge's 2:01:09, and Tigst Assefa ran 2:11:53 there in 2023. Berlin's speed is not an accident of altitude or weather but of geometry — a September date, a flat glacial valley floor and very few corners.