At 10:00 on July 31, the lottery results for the 2026 Hangzhou Marathon were officially released. This year’s Hangzhou Marathon will be held on November 1, with a total field of 36,000 participants—22,000 in the marathon and 14,000 in the half marathon. On the first day of registration this year the number of applicants already topped 200,000; final registrations exceeded 300,000. Of those, 121,562 people registered for the full marathon, an increase of about 83% from 66,310 in 2025; 182,734 registered for the half marathon, up about 68% from 108,521 in 2025. In 2025 the combined registrations for the full and half marathon totaled 174,831—adding the fun run brought the total to only 200,778. This year, with the fun run canceled and only the full and half marathon offered—each expanded by 2,000 slots—registrations still exceeded last year’s by more than 100,000, an increase of roughly 74%. The sharp rise in registrations has directly driven down the full marathon’s lottery acceptance rate. The full marathon lottery acceptance rate for 2026 is about 15%; by contrast, the 2025 rate was 21.19%. That’s a decline of 6.19 percentage points in one year. Competition for the half marathon remains intensely high. This year saw 182,734 applicants and a lottery acceptance rate of 6.68%, essentially flat compared with last year’s 6.73%. The 2026 Hangzhou Marathon introduced a second-round lottery in its registration process. First-round winners who fail to complete payment or other required procedures by the deadline will be regarded as having forfeited their entries, and the vacated spots will be reallocated through the second draw. From 200,000 applicants in 2025 to 300,000 in 2026, the Hangzhou Marathon has in just one year become another domestic event to surpass the 300,000-applicant mark. On November 1 only 36,000 runners will ultimately be able to take to the Hangzhou Marathon course. We’ll be watching closely to see what sparks this year’s race will produce.