This year’s race, which had been slated for April 5, would have been just the second time the event was held since 2019 after returning from a pandemic-induced pause last year.<\/p>\n
Beijing-based Koryo Tours, which describes itself as the exclusive travel partner of the Pyongyang Marathon, said the decision was communicated to it by North Korean athletics authorities.<\/p>\n
A message it published from the DPR Korea Athletics Association said it will “cancel the 2026 Pyongyang International Marathon this year due to some reasons”, without elaborating.<\/p>\n
This year’s cancellation was “unexpected”, said Koryo Tours, adding it understood the decision “has been taken at a level above the organisers of the event itself”.<\/p>\n
“At present, no further information has been provided” on the cancellation beyond the official message, Koryo said.<\/p>\n
The marathon is the largest international sporting event in North Korea, offering visitors a rare chance to run through the tightly controlled streets of its capital city.<\/p>\n
The 2025 race had been seen as a sign of tentative post-pandemic reopening by the reclusive, nuclear-armed country.<\/p>\n
Last year saw about 200 foreign runners take part in the race, along with more than 200 North Koreans.<\/p>\n
That was a significantly lower number than 2019, when about 950 foreigners took part in the race.<\/p>\n
\u00a9 2026 AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This year’s race, which had been slated for April 5, would have been just the second time the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2946,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[129],"class_list":{"0":"post-15212","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pyongyang","8":"tag-pyongyang"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}