Hiroshima Ultra-Trail by UTMB®

The Hiroshima Ultra-Trail by UTMB joins the UTMB World Series with its first edition from 9 to 11 April 2027, and it does something very few ultras attempt: it starts and finishes in the middle of a major city. Runners set off from Hiroshima Gate Park, cross the delta on which the city is built and climb, within a few kilometres, into the green mountains that have framed Hiroshima for centuries. Three races share the same idea at different scales: the HIROSHIMA 100K over 95 km with 5,600 m of ascent, the HIROSHIMA 50K over 49 km with 2,750 m, and the HIROSHIMA 25K over 25 km with 850 m.

Above the rooftops the course turns properly mountainous. Ridgelines rise past 800 m, singletrack threads through dense cedar and broadleaf forest, stone stairways climb to small mountain shrines, and streams drop through mossy gullies on their way to the sea. The higher sections open onto one of the great panoramas of western Japan: the six rivers of the delta, the city spread across them, Hiroshima Bay and the scattered islands of the Seto Inland Sea. Between the ranges the trail drops into quiet country towns, where the race meets everyday life in the hills.

What gives the event its character is the return. After a day and a night in the peaks, the route comes back down into the streets and finishes along the Peace Line, the axis that links the Cenotaph of the Peace Memorial Park to the Atomic Bomb Dome. Few finish lines carry that much meaning, and the organisers have built the whole weekend around it, pairing hard racing with the hospitality, the food and the memory of a city that rebuilt itself. For runners it is a chance to earn a UTMB Index and Running Stones, and to spend the days around the race discovering Hiroshima itself.