Asics Stockholm Marathon

You finished at the same stadium that hosted the 1912 Olympic Games. In June, at this latitude, it is still full daylight at the finish — the kind of Nordic afternoon light that makes everything feel earned. The Stockholm Marathon is a race that moves between islands, and running it you feel the city's geography in a way you don't from a train window. That island-weaving shape is what makes a Stockholm Marathon finisher poster worth keeping on the wall.

Asics Stockholm Marathon at a glance

• Course shape: Loop starting and finishing at the 1912 Olympic Stadium in Östermalm
• Elevation: Around 250 metres of gain — rolling, with several short climbs across the island bridges
• Race date: Early June, the first or second Saturday of the month
• Field size: Around 15,000 runners; open registration
• Midsummer light: At this latitude in June, the race runs in near-continuous daylight — the archipelago is visible from the waterfront sections

The course

The race starts and finishes at Stockholm Olympic Stadium, the red-brick arena built for the 1912 Games. The opening kilometres run through the city centre before the course crosses onto Djurgården, the island park that sits east of the city proper. Djurgården is where the pace tends to settle — tree-lined roads, the Vasa Museum on your left, crowds thinner and quieter than the city streets. It's a brief exhale before the course tightens again.

From Djurgården the route moves south into Södermalm, Stockholm's hillier southern island, which brings the first real climbing of the race. Södermalm is where the course earns its elevation profile — short, sharp rises between flat stretches — and where the views over the water first open up properly. The route then crosses into Gamla Stan, the medieval Old Town, a dense grid of narrow streets on a small island in the middle of the city. Running through Gamla Stan around the mid-race mark is one of those moments that doesn't feel like a race at all. The course then follows the waterfront north, the Stockholm archipelago visible to the east in the midsummer light — and this waterfront stretch is exactly the section that reads most distinctly on a custom route map, the route tracing the edge of the city between islands before heading back to the stadium.

The final kilometres return toward Östermalm and the Olympic Stadium. The finish inside the stadium grounds, with the old brick grandstand above you, is one of the more unusual finishes in European marathon racing. It doesn't feel like a convention centre car park.

Stockholm is a race that respects its own history without being solemn about it. The Olympic Stadium, the island crossings, the midsummer light — it's a course that has its own logic and geography, and finishing it means something specific. makemap turns your GPS data into an event poster that maps the exact path you ran between Stockholm's islands, printed and ready to hang.