The iconic Ironman World Championship returns to its roots next Saturday.
Men and women will once again race on the same day — in Kona on the Big Island — for the first time in 7 years.
“Ultimately, Kona is the pinnacle of the sport and it’s where people want to be,” said Diana Bertsch, Ironman senior vice president and longtime Kona resident. “I think it’s going to be an epic race. They continue to get faster and more competitive.”
Ironman said 2,548 athletes from 85 countries, including 110 professionals, have registered to take on the grueling 240.6-mile swim, bike and run course.
Click here for all you need to know about Ironman World Championship race week and race day, including course routes, road impacts, spectator information and much more.
Hawai‘i County Mayor Kimo Alameda also is excited about the return of the event to its original race day format, adding the triathlon is a big boom for the island’s businesses as well as the hotel and hospitality industry.
When businesses do well, Alameda said, they’re likely to donate to charitable causes and volunteer to help communities in need and nonprofit organizations.
“There’s a direct connection between economic viability and community connectedness,” Alameda said. “So I think that’s also a good thing.”
Ironman’s longtime, successful championship was altered after the COVID-19 pandemic shut down most of the world. First, the pandemic caused the 2020 championship to be canceled and the 2021 championship to be held in May of 2022 in St. George, Utah.
When Ironman returned to Kona in October 2022, organizers changed the format for the first time in its then 45-year history. They split the championship into two days, with all the women and some men’s categories racing on Thursday and the pro men and the rest of the men’s categories competing on the traditional Saturday.
“There were logical reasons why we changed,” Bertsch said.
Due to deferrals caused by the COVID pandemic and canceled or relocated races, Ironman had a record number of 5,200 athletes who qualified for the World Championship in 2022. That was about double the normal number of 2,500. The Kailua Pier where the athletes stage their bikes and make their transitions was too small to accommodate that record number.
But the two-day event taxed some people and businesses in the Kona community, with many locals upset with the weekday road closures and traffic jams, and several downtown businesses unable to open on Thursday due to the large crowds and lack of parking.
To deal with the backlash, the Ironman World Championship was split up for the past three years, with the women and men alternating between Kona and Nice, France, for the championship
But this new format did not go over well with the triathletes.
Ironman has been polling their participants about the new format since 2022. After the 2024 race, more than 10,000 athletes were surveyed, with the majority of them voicing the desire to return to a single-day race with men and women sharing the field.
Bertsch said Ironman is often a family sport where husbands and wives race together. With the World Championship split up, “they were put in a position where they had to choose which race they were going to do, where they couldn’t race together.”
Ironman Group CEO Scott DeRue wrote in an open letter to the triathlon community earlier this year that based on all the feedback and data, it was clear that the majority of participants across all age groups wanted to race together and “race at the beating heart of our sport in Kona, Hawaiʻi.”
DeRue also wrote that when triathletes were asked to rank potential World Championship formats, scenarios that did not include Kona polled lowest, including a “globally rotating two-day event.”
Ironman also had hoped that splitting into the two-day format would lead to increased exposure for women, and thus greater participation among women, but it did not.
But DeRue said “new content production technology will enable increased coverage of the race, including equal broadcast coverage for both professional men and women athletes as they showcase their talents and inspire future generations.”
In previous coverage when the sexes ran together, the men’s race was prioritized.
Official Ironman events begin today, Oct. 3, with a Kona Town Fun Run that begins at 8 a.m.. For a full event schedule, click here.
The main event takes place on Oct. 10, with the professional men starting the World Championship at 6:20 a.m. at the Kailua Pier, followed by the professional women at 6:30 a.m.
The race starts with a 2.4-mile swim in Kailua Bay. They transition to the 112-mile bike ride, pedaling roundtrip to Hawi, mostly along the Queen Ka‘ahumanu Highway. They travel through the lava fields of South Kohala and then return back to the pier area.
The triathlon finishes with a marathon, which takes athletes up Palani Road and into HOST Park at the Natural Energy Laboratory Hawai‘i Authority. The course brings them back into town down Hualālai Road onto Ali‘i Drive where large crowds cheer them as they cross the finish line by Kailua Bay.
In the women’s field, Norway’s Solveig Løvseth will return to defend her 2025 title.
Løvseth finished the race in 8:28:27. That was just 35 seconds faster than Kat Matthews of the United Kingdom, who earned runner-up honors at the Ironman World Championships for the second time in her career.
Lucy Charles-Barclay of the United Kingdom and Taylor Knibb of the United States were leading the pack in the 2025 race and were anticipated to take podium spots.
Charles-Barclay, the winner of the Women’s Ironman World Championship in 2023, dropped out of the competition a little more than halfway into the run course.
Knibb was seeking her first World Championship and was in position to capture it until approximately two miles remained on the run course when she collapsed, allowing Løvseth to pass.
Both athletes bounced back with Charles-Barclay winning the 2025 Precision Fuel & Hydration Ironman 70.3 World Championship in Marbella, Spain, less than a month after her Kona disappointment, with Knibb finishing just behind her in second.
Knibb went on to claim the 2026 Ironman 70.3 World Championship title in Nice, France, in September.
There are 56 male professional athletes participating in Ironman this year.
The men’s field will see the return of four of the previous five Ironman World Champions: Patrick Lange of Germany, Sam Laidlow of France, Gustav Iden and Kristian Blummenfelt, both of Norway.
Reigning Ironman World Champion Casper Stornes of Norway was unable to defend his title this year due to a late injury.
Lange, a three-time Ironman World Champion, says this will be his final Ironman. He is 40.
Laidlow stunned the world when he finished second overall in the 2022 edition at just 23 years old. He went on to win the 2023 Ironman World Championship on home soil when the event was held in Nice, France.
