Mitteldeutscher Marathon, live.

From Leipzig to Halle on foot

A marathon that starts in one city and finishes in another, and two shorter races that start and end on the finish line’s market square.

The 23rd Mitteldeutscher Marathon is run on Sunday 4 October 2026. The marathon starts at 09:00 in Leipzig, at the Elsterflutbecken level with the Sportforum, and runs point to point to the Marktplatz in Halle (Saale), with a limit of five and a half hours. The organiser describes it as a fast course between the two cities. At 11:00 the Händellauf half marathon starts on the Marktplatz in Halle, and at 11:20 the Stadtwerke Halle 10 km, both finishing where they started.

So the whole event ends in one place. The half marathon, according to the organiser, follows the Saale through shaded woods past the city’s viewpoints and historic sites, with a three-hour limit; the 10 km runs through Halle’s old town and past the Saline, where the Halloren still boil salt, with ninety minutes to finish. The organiser’s current marathon page lists aid stations through the villages between the cities — Ermlitz, Raßnitz, Lochau, Döllnitz, Osendorf, Bruckdorf — before the last one at Thüringer Bahnhof at kilometre 40.

A point-to-point marathon is awkward to follow: the people at the start in Leipzig are not the ones waiting on the Marktplatz in Halle, and in between is countryside. With Livebib the runner shares a link to their own broadcast; family and friends open it in a browser, without an account or an app, and see position on the course line, distance covered and a finish estimate for Halle that updates as the race goes. When the phone loses signal, the position is carried forward along the course and marked as estimated instead of freezing.