Generali Köln Marathon, live.

Three times through Rudolfplatz

Cologne’s marathon starts across the Rhine in Deutz, comes back over the Deutzer Brücke in the first kilometre, and finishes under the Dom.

The Generali Köln Marathon is run on Sunday 4 October 2026. Both the half marathon (08:30) and the marathon (10:30) start on Opladener Straße at Ottoplatz by Deutz station, cross the Rhine on the Deutzer Brücke with the Dom and the Altstadt ahead, and finish on Komödienstraße at the foot of the cathedral, the last few hundred metres along Hohe Straße. The course is closed to traffic, AIMS-measured and described by the organiser as flat and fast. The relay and the school marathon share the marathon course.

The marathon goes south first, past the Chocolate Museum and the Kranhäuser to Bayenthal and Rodenkirchen, back through the Südstadt and the Severinstorbogen, and then out west through Sülz, Lindenthal, Ehrenfeld and north to Nippes. Rudolfplatz is a crossroads of the whole course: the marathon passes it three times, the half at kilometres 3, 12 and 19. The limits are 6 hours net for the marathon and 2 hours 45 for the half, with timing mats roughly every five kilometres.

With up to 15,000 marathon runners and 20,000 in the half, finding one person in the crowd at Rudolfplatz is a matter of timing. With Livebib the runner shares a link to their own broadcast; family and friends open it in a browser, no account and no app, and see position on the course line, distance covered and a finish estimate for the Dom that updates as the race goes. Between the tall buildings, where a phone’s GPS can wander or drop, the position is carried forward along the course and marked as estimated rather than freezing.