Golden Trail World Series 2025: Everything you need to know

The Golden Trail World Series 2025 (GTWS), arguably the fastest elite trail running series, kicks off in under two weeks.

The 2025 season features eight regular races from April to August and a grand final in October. The GTWS will award more than €300,000 of prize money across the nine events and provides financial assistance to top-performing athletes throughout the season.

The defending champions are Joyce Njeru (KEN-NNormal) and Elhousine Elazzaoui (MOR-NNormal).

GTWS 2025 Race Schedule, Rules, Rankings

The Golden Trail Series focuses on the short-trail distance, with races between the half and full marathon distances.

Only three races from 2024 are part of the GTWS 2025 circuit: Kobe Trail (Japan), Zegama-Aizkorri (Spain), Sierre-Zinal (Switzerland). The schedule is split into four stages of two races: Asia, Europe, the Americas, Europe, including the Grand Final in the Valle di Ledro, Garda Trentino, Italy from 9-12 October.

Here is a summary of the rules and the points/ranking system for the Golden Trail World Series 2025:

Rules:

• Participation in GTWS races is open to all individuals, contingent on the availability of race bibs and at the athlete’s own expense.
• The top 30 male and female athletes from the Golden Trail World Series 2024 overall ranking will receive free race bibs for all Golden Trail World Series 2025 races.
• Furthermore, the top 20 male and female finishers from the 2024 GTWS are invited to participate in four races of the GTWS 2025 series, provided they pre-register and compete in a minimum of three Golden Trail World Series 2025 races. An “invitation” covers travel, accommodation, and meals, plus an allowance.
• To be included in the final general classification of the Golden Trail World Series 2025 (the final overall ranking) is the mandatory participation in the Grand Final.

Points and Ranking System:

Points are awarded to the top 60 finishers in each of the eight regular GTWS races, excluding the Grand Final.

• The winner of each regular race receives 200 points.
• Points decrease incrementally down to 2 points for the 60th place finisher.

The Grand Final consists of a prologue and a final race, a format used since 2023.

• The prologue is a time trial held two days before the final race, which awards 100 points to the winner, with points distributed among the top 30 finishers, decreasing to 37 points for 30th place.
• The final race carries more weight, with 300 points awarded to the winner, and points extending to the top 60 finishers, down to 3 points for 60th place.

The overall ranking for the Golden Trail World Series 2025 is determined by considering an athlete’s best three results from the eight regular GTWS races, combined with their result in the mandatory Grand Final.

In the event of a tie in overall points (as in the women’s race in 2023), several tie-breaking rules will apply:

• The best place achieved in any of the GTWS races is considered first.
• If still tied, the second-best place is considered.
• Then, the third-best place.
• If athletes remain tied, the system considers whether an athlete has beaten their direct competitor in any of the GTWS races.

Prize money

The Golden Trail World Series 2025 offers a substantial €300,000 (and counting) total prize purse across the nine events, including the grand final.

Beyond direct prize money, the GTWS provides additional support:

1. Regular season: Invitation packages for the top 20 athletes from GTWS 2024 include financial support per race and covered accommodation for four races in the GTWS 2025 season.
2. Grand final: The top 30 ranked male and female athletes after the eight regular races will receive financial assistance from the GTWS to help them participate in the Grand Final. This support covers travel, accommodation, and meals.

Furthermore, at the end of the season, the top 30 athletes in the final rankings (GTWS calls this the “Final General Classification”) will be recognised as “Golden Trail World Elite Athletes” (what a mouthful) for the 2026 series. This status comes with the benefit of free race bibs for the races of their choice.

For non-elites, the top 3 athletes in the OPEN category will win “Golden Tickets” for the 2026 Golden Trail World Series.

In essence, only non-“Elite Athletes” (including athletes from the Golden Trail National Series) are eligible to win “Golden Tickets”, which are entry to races, and probably some financial support.

Teams and athletes

The Golden Trail World Series IG page announced the fifteen teams and their athlete line-ups for the 2025 season on 12 April:

Major athlete storylines for the Golden Trail World Series 2025 season

We watch sports for stories and drama! The Golden Trail World Series 2025 promises compelling narratives surrounding the athletes competing for the coveted title. This is a selection:

• Returning Champions: Reigning champions of the 2024 Golden Trail World Series, Elhousine Elazzaoui and Joyce Njeru, will be key figures in the 2025 season. Now on the same team (NNormal), their efforts to defend their hard-earned titles against a consistently strong and evolving field of competitors will form a primary narrative thread.
  
  Elazzaoui is scheduled to race six of the eight regular season races, sadly skipping the two Asian races. Njeru, however, will race in Kobe, Japan, as well as other GTWS races – NNormal’s athlete calendar is, unfortunately, unspecific.
  
  
• Rising Stars: Joyline Chepngeno burst onto the Golden Trail World Series by winning Sierre-Zinal (the Fast and Furious), her first-ever trail race! She was also in a duel with fellow Kenyan Joyce Njeru in the Grand Final and, despite twisting her ankle, still managed to win the final race.
  
  Malen Osa demonstrated impressive consistency throughout the 2024 season, regularly featuring near the front and earning a fantastic third place overall in the GTWS, bettering her fourth place in 2023. Miao Yao‘s progress has mirrored Osa’s, finishing one place behind her in the final rankings of the past two seasons. As an active road marathon runner, her challenge will be finding the right training and recovery balance between the two sports. She is the only Asian among the top 20 of the “Elite Athletes”! I’m hoping she becomes the catalyst for greater Asian participation in the series.
  
  
• Key Rivalries: The top four male athletes have played musical chairs over the past two seasons. Patrick Kipngeno finished second in back-to-back seasons (2023-2024). Rémi Bonnet was champion in back-to-back seasons (2022-2023). Both are strong climbers but are known to sometimes “struggle” on the downhills – they are still fast! Both are focused on the Golden Trail Series and are expected to mount serious challenges to Elazzaoui.
  
  The young Philemon Kiriago is not far behind. Finishing third in 2023, then fourth in 2024. Perhaps slightly overshadowed by teammate and compatriot, Kipngeno, including pushing the pace at 2024’s Mammoth 26K to try to help the latter beat Elazzaoui (the Moroccan still won in a contentious finish). The Golden Trail World Series 2025 may be the year he matures and fully steps into the limelight.

Where to watch the Golden Trail World Series 2025?

In previous seasons, the Golden Trail World Series streams most of the races on their YouTube channel with impressive production quality (reminiscent of Red Bull’s extreme sports content).

In 2024, six of the eight races were streamed live (seven of nine if we include the Tatra Sky Marathon, which was cancelled due to dangerous weather).

In 2023, six of the seven races were streamed live.

Besides the live streams, expect the GTWS 2025 produces informative and entertaining race recaps, highlighting key race moments and athlete storylines as the season progresses.

Wait, what about the Golden Trail National Series (GTNS)?

The Golden Trail National Series (GTNS) is a grassroots development system which nurtures talented, aspiring athletes at a national and regional level, providing them a pathway to progress to international racing.

The most common mechanism to qualify to the Golden Trail World Series involves “Golden Tickets” (internal link to prize section above).

In 2025, the GTNS has a significant global presence, with confirmed series in several countries and regions, including Japan, South Korea, China, Australia, the UK, France, Germany, and Poland/Czech Republic/Slovakia.

However, It has been reported that Salomon has pulled support from most national series to reinvest in the World Series.

Closing thoughts

I genuinely hope you are excited about the Golden Trail World Series 2025. Ultra distances (>50K) generally get most of the trail running media spotlight and attention, so I’d like to share my passion for these shorter races.

Besides, the race-viewing experience is fun! The GTWS’ race production is top-notch, making it easy for fans to follow the action – and there are LOTS of it in these speedy races. Give it a try!

If you enjoyed this article, read this brief history of the Golden Trail World Series since its inception.

Want more? Watch Season 4 of Chasing Dreams, a documentary of the GTWS 2024.