World Road Running Championships

The World Championships, which were once only available to elite athletes, is now available to everyone! Take the opportunity to register and participate in the World Championship running mass races, earning the first World Running Championship medals!

More information about the World Athletics Road Running Championships can be found on the official website of the – riga23.com. Remember that registration prices increase as the event approaches, so register now!

The World Athletics Road Running Championships, which will have its world premiere in Riga on September 30 and October 1, 2023, will be the most important national sports and athletics event in the history of the Baltic States. This one-of-a-kind running festival, which will crown world champions in the road mile, 5 kilometers, and half-marathon distances in Riga, will also bring together thousands of amateur runners from at least 100 countries, as well as elite runners in all distances, for the first time.

In July 2021, the Rimi Riga Marathon team, in tandem with the Latvian Athletics Federation, won the right to organize the World Road Running Championships in Riga. It is one of the central events of the World Athletics Series in 2023 and, therefore, one of the most important events in world sports as a whole.

In preparation for the World Road Running Championships in Riga, Sebastian Coe (President of World Athletics) symbolically announced Riga as the 2023 World Road Running Capital at a press conference, inviting everyone to participate in the upcoming World Running Festival in Riga on September 30 – October 1.

In this new format of the World Championships, any of us recreational runners, regardless of speed and P.E. grades at school, will be able to complete in all World Championships distances in order to get an official World Championships medal in the Road mile, 5 kilometer or half-marathon distance in the company of the best running stars on the planet. In what other sport is this possible? Only in running.

When else, if not at the World Championships in Riga, will each of us have the opportunity to run all three distances, getting three World Championship medals? Wouldn’t it be great to run all of them in Riga?

We have deliberately designed the program in such a way that those interested have the opportunity to win three medals:

Saturday, September 30

10:00 – Mile Mass Race
12:10 – Mile Women’s Elite
12:20 – Mile Men’s Elite

12:45 – 5K Women’s Elite
13:10 – 5K Men’s Elite + Mass Race

Sunday, October 1

11:05 – Half Marathon Women’s Elite
11:35 – Half Marathon Men’s + Mass Race

The World Running Championships is a great way to bring Latvian art and culture to the world. Continuing our annual tradition, this time we have put an excellent work created by a Latvian artist on the official World Road Running Championships running shirt.

The painting “Spring (Springtime),” by Vilhelms Purvītis, the most significant artist in Latvian art history, was chosen for the official running shirt after evaluation of the works of old masters with Māra Lāce, the director of the Latvian National Art Museum.

The shirts can be reserved by registering for one of the distances for the World Road Running Championships and will be available for pick-up at the World Road Running Championships EXPO in Hanzas Perons at the end of September 2023.

If the people of Riga were asked to name the main symbols of Riga, many would immediately mention the roosters in the church towers of Riga.

Niklāvs Strunke and the Cubism of that time were also a source of inspiration, creating the official mascot of the World Road Running Championships – the Riga Rooster. As you know, the National Library of Latvia and the Riga Rooster are represented in the logo of the World Road Running Championships, symbolizing the two banks of the Daugava and uniting them through this running festival.

The Riga Rooster will be present at various Latvian and global events and will invite everyone to participate in the only World Championships, in which anyone can be not only a supporter, but also a participant.