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Hakone Ekiden Field Size to be Increased by 2 Teams


Hakone Ekiden organizers KGRR announced May 18 that the Yosenkai qualifying race for next year's 103rd Hakone Ekiden will be held Oct. 17 on its usual 21.0975 km half marathon course starting at the Tachikawa Air SDF Base in western Tokyo and finishing next door at Showa Kinen Park. The top 10 teams at the 102nd Hakone Ekiden this past January including winner Aoyama Gakuin University auto-qualified for the 103rd Hakone. All other schools in the Kanto Region must run the Yosenkai to qualify, fielding up to 12 athletes with their first 10 finishers scored on aggregate time. The 10 fastest teams will go on to the main event next January.

The field this time is expected to include Toyo University, which finished 14th at the 102nd Hakone to break a 20-year+ streak of top 10 finishes, 15th-place Nittai University which will be looking to make Hakone for the 79th year in a row, and the debuting Shibaura Kogyo University. It's an exciting mix of traditional powerhouses and up-and-coming programs doing battle for the 10 tickets to the sport's biggest race.

Beginning with the 104th Hakone Ekiden in 2028, the field size will be increased to 23 teams including the Kanto Region Student Alliance select team. In anniversary years, previously celebrated every 5 years but now changed to every 4 years, the field will include an additional 3 teams to make 26 including the Student Alliance team. The 103rd Hakone Ekiden next January will be the last with the until now standard field size of 20 teams plus the Student Alliance.

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Anonymous said…
Not sure if I like the additional teams or not but I guess it would make the top 10 battle more interesting. I know history says it's a Kanto teams race but at this point maybe extending it to all of Japan would give more benefits to the country. I don't know, on one side every year we basically watch the best long distance race on Earth, on the other side there's reasonining to find small ways to improve it without making it worse. Let's see if this brings up Yosenkai level too.
May 20, 2026 at 9:50 PM
Brett Larner said…
Mixed feelings about the extra teams for sure. It gives more people the chance to get the experience of running Hakone and over time will probably give more schools the chance to be a part of it, but the drop-off in quality as you go down the field outside the top 10 at most Yosenkai means those teams won't contribute a whole lot except to bigger white sash starts on day 2. On the other hand Hakone was 15 teams for a long time and seems to have benefitted by the move to a standard size of 20. We'll see how it plays out.
May 22, 2026 at 10:36 AM
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