Salzkotten Marathon

The Salzkotten Marathon is a flat, family-friendly loop-course marathon held on the first Sunday of June in Salzkotten, a small town in the Ostwestfalen-Lippe (OWL) region of North Rhine-Westphalia. Runners complete four laps of a roughly 10-kilometer circuit, starting and finishing at the Bürgerturm on Marktstraße and passing the town's landmark Sälzer-Gradierwerk (a historic saltworks graduation tower), where a popular aid station draws some of the loudest crowd support on the course. The half marathon covers two laps of the same circuit, while a 10K and 5K run alongside it, plus kids' Bambini races and Special Olympics categories for athletes with intellectual disabilities. Officially measured and largely flat, the course has produced sub-2:30 winning times and remains popular with Boston-qualifying attempts. Now in its 18th year, the race drew a record field of more than 2,600 runners across all distances in 2025, supported by a Saturday-evening pasta party and proceeds that fund local youth sports programs. A sports-retail sponsor titles the event locally, but organizers and regional media refer to it simply as the Salzkotten Marathon. Online registration for the 18th edition, on June 6, 2027, typically opens in mid-November the year before.