Amsterdam marathon organization wants the event to go through the city center again

The Amsterdam Marathon organization has big plans for the 2025 edition, which will be the 50th anniversary of the running event and the year that the city of Amsterdam celebrates existing for 750 years. “We are thinking about changes to the course, among other things. We would like to return to the city center," said race director René Wit during a press conference.

The significant popularity of running can be seen in the increasing interest in the event, the organization said. A record number of 48,000 participants from 140 countries are on the starting list for next Sunday. A total of 22,500 runners are participating in the full marathon, which has a distance of 42.195 kilometers. Almost 20,000 people will be doing the half marathon.

In the past, the course took the runners through parts of the old city center, but the current route mainly goes through the south of the capital. The runners do pass the Rijksmuseum and run through the Vondelpark. The start and finish are traditionally in the Olympic Stadium.

"These are explorations, and we are in discussions about this with the municipality,” Wit said about the plans for next year. “For example, we see that the course near the stadium is 'restless' with many twists and turns. We see opportunities for improvements there to make the course faster. The section along the Amstel will remain intact."

According to the race director, a quicker course will attract faster athletes to the marathon of Amsterdam, which has the highest rating from the global athletics association with the so-called “platinum label” and therefore benefits from an attractive field of participants.

“This ambition exists in addition to our goal of getting people to move more, including children and disabled people,” Wit added, who sees space in receiving more people.

“For that, we are thinking about a change to the schedule. We could move the eight-kilometer run to the Saturday. Of course, there is a limit to the number of people that you can have participate. That has to do with the logistics and the width of the streets. We want everybody to be able to run at their own speed.”