On June 30, 2026 the Shanghai Marathon lottery results were officially announced. 381,988 people registered, and the overall draw rate was only 6%, making the competition the fiercest in recent years. After the results were released, the running community expressed the usual mix of joy and disappointment—but there were also many voices of criticism.
Some people calculated from the draw rate that the public lottery slots were only a little over 20,000 and used that to accuse the Shanghai Marathon of violating the Chinese Athletics Association’s “90%” rule; others pointed at the ITP travel packages aimed at overseas runners, complaining that “Chinese people can’t buy” them and calling that unfair.
Some of these criticisms stem from information asymmetry; others ignore the specific development stage Shanghai Marathon is in. Before answering those criticisms, we should look at the bigger picture: 2026 is the 30th anniversary of the Shanghai Marathon and a crucial year in its push for inclusion in the World Marathon Majors.
Over 30 years of staging the race, Shanghai has moved from domestic leader to World Athletics Platinum Label and now to a candidate event for the Majors—taking a long-term approach. At this special juncture, some controversies need clarification, some misunderstandings should be resolved, and some issues deserve attention more than the lottery rate.
01
6% draw rate, public quota below 90%
Numbers need to be interpreted correctly
The core logic of netizen criticism is: total registrants 381,988 × draw rate 6% ≈ 23,000 people, while the event’s total field is 30,000, so about 7,000 people are not in the public lottery pool—therefore Shanghai Marathon violated the CAA requirement that “public participant slots should in principle be no less than 90% of the event’s total entry size.”
That deduction looks rigorous but actually contains multiple levels of misunderstanding.
The Chinese Athletics Association’s 2025 Notice on Further Regulating Marathon Events requires that “public participant slots for each event should in principle be no less than 90% of the event’s total entry size.” But the three words “in principle” allow for flexibility; it is not an absolute, rigid metric.
More importantly, the definition of “public participants” does not refer only to the “lottery pool”—runners who qualify by time standards and gain automatic entry are also within the category of public participants.Equating “public lottery slots” with “public participant slots” is a narrowed reading of the regulation.Therefore, treating the approximately 23,000 lottery slots as equivalent to 90% of the total public participant quota is itself a numeric misinterpretation.
Shanghai’s entry allocation has many channels: public lottery; automatic qualifiers (including top 200 in Shanghai Women’s Half, Suzhou Creek Half top 150 men/top 100 women, Shanghai Half top 200 men/top 100 women, etc.); invited elite athletes; sponsor entries; international tourist runner (ITP) slots—these channels together make up the total 30,000 entries.
In fact, the event’s expansion itself shows considerable goodwill. For 2026 the full marathon field expanded from the usual 23,000 to 30,000—an increase of 7,000 slots. Faced with runners’ sustained enthusiasm, the organizing committee has released as many additional slots as possible.
But increasing marathon entries touches many areas: course capacity, traffic organization, medical rescue, aid station services, volunteer deployment, roadside management and overall city operations all face major tests on race day. A truly high-level city marathon must let runners enjoy the race while keeping the city running smoothly and orderly—striking that balance is exactly where organizers’ professional capability is shown.
Compared with the international Majors, Shanghai’s proportion of public lottery slots is not low.By estimation, the 2026 Shanghai Marathon’s lottery slots are about 23,000, roughly 76% of the 30,000 total. That share, when compared across the World Marathon Majors, is far from “low” and is in fact quite generous.
Consider the data: New York Marathon’s field exceeds 60,000 but only about 2,400 spots are for the public lottery; Boston Marathon has no traditional public lottery, with roughly 80% of entries reserved for qualifiers; London Marathon’s field is nearly 60,000, with lottery spots between 17,000 and 20,000 and many slots allocated to charities; Tokyo Marathon’s field is 38,000, of which about 30,000 spots are used for the lottery.
By comparison, the 2026 Shanghai Marathon’s lottery share of about 76% is roughly on par with Tokyo and noticeably higher than New York, London and Boston in terms of lottery openness. In other words, Shanghai is already at the forefront among top international races in ensuring public participation.
Therefore,Reading the “public lottery quota of 76%” as “violating the Athletics Association’s 90% rule” ignores the flexible caveat implied by “in principle,” narrows the definition of who counts as “mass runners,” and overlooks the internationally common practice of allocating entries through multiple channels.If we follow some commenters’ logic — that the New York Marathon’s public lottery is under 5% and the Boston Marathon has almost no public lottery — should those races therefore be declared “unfair”?
Clearly not; the plurality of entry-allocation methods is itself the industry norm for major marathons.
From a broader perspective, more than 380,000 people entered and the successful-draw rate is only about 6%, which means most runners still have to wait. But the fact that so many people register year after year, wait and hope, is itself a genuine sign of strong word-of-mouth. The idea that “a spot at the Shanghai Marathon is hard to get” may on the surface reflect tight quotas, but at a deeper level it concentrates the race’s appeal as a city event.
02
“Overseas travel packages” — are Chinese people not allowed to buy them?
Fairness should not be oversimplified.
Another point of controversy is the ITP (International Tourist Runners) program. As an official Shanghai Marathon packaged product offering guaranteed entry plus travel services for overseas runners, the program explicitly limits registration to overseas participants — runners from Mainland China and from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan are not eligible. Some runners have questioned: on what basis can Chinese people not buy it?
That grievance is understandable, but it needs to be examined in a broader context.
Firstly,this is standard practice among top international races, not discrimination.Tokyo Marathon, London Marathon, Boston Marathon and other World Marathon Majors all offer travel packages or direct-entry channels aimed at overseas runners, and their quotas are not insignificant. This is a standard configuration for top international events, intended to attract global participants and raise the race’s international profile. As a candidate for the World Marathon Majors, the Shanghai Marathon aligning itself with international standards is only natural.
Secondly, the Shanghai Marathon is at a critical stage of pushing for inclusion in the World Marathon Majors. The Majors label is not just an honorific; it represents a set of strict event standards. Those standards assess not only elite athlete fields and competitive level, but also event organization, runner services, city support, international communication and overall operational capacity.
The ITP program is precisely an important initiative for the Shanghai Marathon to benchmark itself against Majors standards and to raise its level of internationalization.For 2026 the Shanghai Marathon attracted 13,973 international runners from 116 countries and regions, and its degree of internationalization has been growing year by year — a trend driven in part by programs like ITP.
Third, there already exists a clear difference in treatment between Chinese and foreign runners — but in the opposite direction.Chinese runners pay a registration fee of 200 RMB per person, whereas foreign runners pay US$160 per person (about ¥1,150 RMB); the foreign registration fee is nearly six times the domestic rate.
Fourth, fairness should not be interpreted simplistically.“Fairness” does not mean that “every channel must be completely open to everyone.”Different channels serve different groups and different purposes. The public lottery guarantees basic fairness; guaranteed entries incentivize and reward high-performing runners; sponsor slots underwrite race operations; international channels expand the event’s global reach. Each channel has a role, and together they form a complete entry-allocation system. Singling out any one channel and accusing it of being “unfair” is inevitably one-sided.
Moreover, the Shanghai Marathon has consistently prioritized Chinese runners as its main constituency: the vast majority of the 30,000 full-marathon spots remain open to domestic participants. Serving local runners well while actively expanding international influence are not mutually exclusive.
03
30th anniversary — a bigger picture for the Shanghai Marathon
Returning to a more fundamental question: by what standards should we evaluate a marathon?
A 6% lottery acceptance rate is admittedly disheartening if you only look at that figure. But consider that in just four years Shanghai Marathon entries more than doubled, that full-marathon slots increased from 23,000 to 30,000, and that the race has grown from a leading domestic event to a World Athletics Platinum Label race and even a candidate for the World Marathon Majors. That growth curve itself is a microcosm of the vigorous development of marathon running in China.
In 2026, the Shanghai Marathon will stage the health run and the full marathon on separate days. That arrangement both allows the full marathon to focus more on the professional experience and leaves more room for mass participation. A top-level race should not be only a festival for the few who win the lottery. Some people run the full marathon, some take part in the health run; some run on the course, others cheer from the roadside; some volunteer, and for some this race will be their first-ever run. All of these are part of the Shanghai Marathon.
The higher the level a race reaches, the more it must prioritize runner experience and mass participation. The Shanghai Marathon has been working on this in recent years.
Questioning is a force that drives progress. Runners’ focus on how Shanghai Marathon slots are allocated and their demands for fairness precisely show how much is expected of the event. But no race develops overnight — the Shanghai Marathon’s 30 years of progress have come from year‑by‑year attention to detail and raising standards.
30,000 slots, 380,000 applicants, a 6% draw rate — the contradiction behind those numbers is essentially the rapid growth of China’s marathon industry versus the relative scarcity of high‑quality race resources. This contradiction cannot be resolved by blaming a single race; it requires the whole industry to work together.
Until then, perhaps give the Shanghai Marathon a bit more understanding and patience. After all, a race that people look forward to year after year deserves to be taken seriously.
[Reader interaction]
Text / Editor: CC
Image source: Paoye Dabaozha
Visual: Max
