Sign-ups open for Unirun 2026

The twelfth edition of the Unirun opened its registration period today, Tuesday, December 9. The race, already a benchmark event in Catalan university athletics, will take place on Sunday 1 March 2026 at Barcelona’s Parc del Fòrum. The University of Barcelona, which continues to act as event organizer, is hoping that over two of the six thousand participants will come from the UB community. Last year, the first three thousand registrations were completed in less than three weeks, and by 3 January the six-thousand bib limit had already been reached.

The Unirun race, promoted by the twelve Catalan universities through the association Catalan University Sport (ECU), is supported by the Barcelona City Council and the Generalitat of Catalonia’s Secretariat General for Sport and Physical Activity. Its five-kilometre course is designed to be open to everyone connected to the Catalan university system, meaning that registration is open to students, teaching and research staff, technical, management and administrative staff, alumni, future students and supporters, as well as family members and collaborators. The only condition is that runners need to be at least 15 years old.

Parc del Fòrum will once again host the start and finish of the Unirun, which will begin at 9:30 a.m. and which allows runners a maximum time of one hour to complete the circuit. Runner services will include chip timing, checkpoints, liquid refreshment, cloakroom service, medical assistance and the official Adidas technical T-shirt. Bibs and race materials can be collected on 27 and 28 February between 10 a.m. and 8 p.m. Participants coming from outside the province of Barcelona may collect their materials on the race day itself, between 7:30 a.m. and 9 a.m.

The inter-university competition system, which identifies each runner with their chosen institution, will remain one of the central features of this year’s event. Last year, the University of Barcelona achieved excellent results, winning the overall championship title and taking first place in both the women’s and general classifications. This year, the UB hopes to defend those positions in a context of growing participation and consolidation of university sport.

The Unirun’s regulations provide awards for the top overall finishers in both male and female categories, for the winners of each university and for the institutions that top the aggregated rankings. In addition, certain universities recognize participation in the Unirun with ECTS credits; at the University of Barcelona, students can find information about this at UB Sports.

This year’s Unirun maintains the objective of other years: to promote sporting activity and strengthen the bonds within our university community. For this reason, the UB encourages the entire community to take part in an event that combines physical activity, institutional identity, and a shared environment for thousands of runners from across the Catalan university system.