Last year I wrote an update of the all-time men’s marathon best times and the world record evolution (post here, following an older one from 2014, ahead of running that year’s Rotterdam marathon). This is a new update including 2026 best time as this has been an extraordinary year: the world record has been beaten and the two hours barrier has been broken in an official race for the first time in history. The 2026 version of the post includes all marathon times below 2h08′ up to and including today’s New York marathon.
As in the previous posts, I use the website “Track and Field all-time Performances” (maintained since years ago by Peter Larsson). As Larsson has not updated his marathon times list since mid August, this time I completed the dataset with World Athletics all-time toplists (which added 86 times from the races between late September and late October) and with today’s New York marathon results (from LetsRun, still provisional at the time of writing, as NYRR has not yet published the official ones).
With the data of all-time best men’s marathon I plotted the chart below with the best 2,239 times, i.e., all those below 2h08′, and their dates, highlighting marathon times by Haile Gebrselassie, Wilson Kipsang, Eliud Kipchoge, Kenenisa Bekele, Kelvin Kiptum, Sabastian Sawe, Yomif Kejelcha, Jacob Kiplimo and Amos Kipruto.
Some stats in relation to those 2,239 times under 2h08′ (they were 1,903 when I reviewed them in September 2025; 249 of them have been achieved in 2026 alone, more than in any previous year!):
- Countries of which athletes achieved most such times: Kenya 959 times or 42.8%, Ethiopia 666 times or 29.7%, Japan 138 (6.2%), Morocco 51 (2.3%), Eritrea 51 (2.3%), USA 34 (1.5%), Uganda 27 (1.2%), Spain 27 (1.2%), Israel 26 (1.2%). Those are the top 9 countries, there are another 35 from which athletes have run below 2h08′ (for a total of 44 countries).
- There are 872 athletes that have run below 2h08′. The individuals who have done so more often: Eliud Kipchoge 18 times (he still runs marathons, he even won the Melbourne marathon 3 weeks ago in 2h09 at 41 years old!), Sisay Lemma 17, Tamirat Tola 16, Amos Kipruto 15, Tsegay Kebede 15, Benson Kipruto 14, Abel Kirui 13, Evans Chebet 12, Wilson Kipsang 12, Geoffrey Kamworor 12, Bernard Kiprop 12, Birhanu Legese 11, … Kenenisa Bekele 10, Haile Gebrselassie 10…
Now, if we raise the bar to see the times at or below 2h05′, we find 301 times (they were 231 a year ago):
- Countries of which athletes achieved most such times: Kenya 135 times or 44.9%, Ethiopia 121 times or 40.2% (both combined 85.1%!), Uganda 7 (2.3%), Tanzania 7 (2.3%), Belgium 5 (1.7%), Germany 5 (1.7%). Those are the top 6 countries, there are another 15 from which athletes have run at or below 2h05′ (for a total of 21 countries, 5 more than last year).
- There are 154 athletes that have run at or below 2h05′ (30 more than last year). The individuals who have done so more often: Eliud Kipchoge 14 times, Amos Kipruto 10, Tamirat Tola 10, Wilson Kipsang 8, Sisay Lemma 7, Birhanu Legese 6, Gabriel Geay 5, Alexander Mutiso 5, Leul Gebrselassie 5, Sabastian Sawe 4, Kenenisa Bekele 4, and several other athletes with 4, and with 3 times including Kelvin Kiptum, Dennis Kimetto, Geoffrey Mutai and Haile Gebrselassie.
- Which are the fastest marathons? The cities where most of those 301 times at or below 2h05′ have been achieved are: Berlin 41, Valencia 39, London 33, Amsterdam 28, Dubai 27, Chicago 24, Rotterdam 22, Tokyo 21. Those are the top 8 cities (accounting for 78% of those 301 times), there are other 17 cities where such fast times have been achieved.
Now let’s look at the evolution of the World Record since 1985 in this other chart:
Some comments to the chart:
- In the last 41 years, the record has been beaten 14 times.
- The current world record was set by Sabastian Sawe in London on 26 April 2026 with 1h59’30”, at the age of 31. It is the first official time below 2 hours and it was ratified by World Athletics in July (Eliud Kipchoge had run 1:59:41 in Vienna in 2019, but that exhibition, with rotating pacemakers, was not record-eligible).
- That London race was historic beyond the record: Yomif Kejelcha (1h59’41”) and Jacob Kiplimo (2h00’28”) also finished under the previous world record, with Amos Kipruto 4th in 2h01’39”, Tamirat Tola 5th in 2h02’59” and Deresa Geleta 6th in 2h03’23”.
- Sawe took 1’05” off Kiptum’s record, which had lasted two years and a half. The biggest improvement of the record was still made by Eliud Kipchoge, who took 1’18” off Dennis Kimetto’s previous record in 2018.
- The record that lasted the most was Dinsamo’s 2:06:50 in 1988, which took just over 10 years to be beaten by Ronaldo da Costa in 1998.
- 3 athletes have set the world record twice: Khalid Khannouchi, Haile Gebrselassie and Eliud Kipchoge.
- Geoffrey Mutai ran in 2h03’02” in Boston 2011 and this year John Kipkosgei won Boston in 2h01’52”; as Boston is a downhill point-to-point course, those times do not count for the record.
- In the same day in London, Tigst Assefa set a women-only world record of 2h15’41” (improving her own mark from 2025), with Hellen Obiri (2h15’53”) and Joyciline Jepkosgei (2h15’55”) completing the first race ever with 3 women below 2h16′ (see World Athletics report and London Marathon).
Other remarkable marathon facts from 2026:
- Amos Kipruto won Chicago in 2h01’09”, equalling to the second the world record that Kipchoge had set in Berlin 2022.
- Guye Adola won Berlin in 2h02’50”, and Tamirat Tola won Beijing in 2h03’10”.
- Eliud Kipchoge, close to turning 42, ran won Melbourne two weeks ago.
- Today in New York, Andreas Almgren (the reigning world half marathon champion) won in his marathon debut with 2h06’01”; 13 men ran below 2h08′.
What is the best age to run marathons?
I plotted this other chart looking at the best 2,239 marathon times vs the age the runners had at the time of completing each of those races (for the 2,201 of them for which the sources include the full birth date).
Most of the times below 2h08′ are achieved between 23 and 33 years old, and the very best ones are spread between 25 and 37, with the exceptions of the 3 marathons ran by Kelvin Kiptum, including his former world record at 23.9, Tadese Takele (2h03’24” at 21.1) and the 2h00’28” by Jacob Kiplimo at 25.4. Sawe’s world record, on the contrary, was set at 31.1. The youngest ever to run such a fast marathon was Tsegaye Mekonnen: 2h04’32” in Dubai 2014 at 18.6.
Another interesting chart to relate best times and age is the histogram below. In that one we can see that effectively most of the times below 2h08′ are achieved between 24 and 30 years old, and between 23 and 33 (both included) 79% of those times are achieved.
Let’s see what Valencia brings in December with Yomif Kejelcha and John Korir on the roster.
