Tokyo Waited Seven Years to Join Marathon Running’s Most Exclusive Club

In 2006, five of the world’s most storied marathons, Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago, and New York City, formally united under a single banner: the World Marathon Majors. The idea was straightforward, create a championship-style points series that let elite runners compete across the calendar for a share of prize money and the sport’s ultimate bragging rights. For seven years, those five races had the category entirely to themselves.

Tokyo joined as the sixth Major in 2013, and it remains, even now, the only race representing Asia in the group.

Why Tokyo had to wait

The original five Majors were selected specifically for their combination of deep historical prestige, consistently elite fields, and massive established runner bases, criteria that a newer race, however large, would need years to genuinely earn. The Tokyo Marathon itself only began in its current large-scale format in 2007, a full year after the World Marathon Majors series had already launched with its founding five. Getting from a newly expanded race to a fully credentialed Major took Tokyo six additional years of building both its elite field quality and its reputation among the international running community.

That patience paid off. Registration for the 2013 Tokyo Marathon, the race’s first as an official Major, drew over 300,000 applicants for a field that could only accommodate a fraction of that number, evidence of demand that had clearly outgrown the race’s earlier, smaller scale well before the official Major status arrived.

What Tokyo actually added to the group

Beyond simply adding a sixth logo to the series, Tokyo brought something structurally important: legitimate Asian representation to a series that had, until 2013, been exclusively European and North American.

Tad Hayano, the Tokyo Marathon Foundation’s race director at the time, was direct about the ambition behind the addition: “As the first marathon from Asia, we will continuously make an effort to expand the brand of the WMM in Asia.”

The race also carries genuine competitive weight beyond ceremony. Its flat, fast course has become a legitimate venue for elite times, and it regularly doubles as an official qualifying and selection event for Japan’s own national teams heading into major international championships, giving the race a domestic competitive significance that extends well beyond its role in the global Majors series.

The club keeps growing, carefully

Tokyo held the sixth spot alone for over a decade before Sydney became the seventh Major in 2025, the newest addition to a series that’s clearly willing to expand, but only after sustained proof a race belongs among the sport’s elite tier.

Runners who complete all six original Majors earn what’s called the Six Star Medal, a genuinely significant achievement in the distance running community that had recorded roughly 5,000 finishers by 2019 and has grown substantially since.

The series has signaled interest in eventually adding an eighth and ninth race, with Cape Town and Shanghai floated as potential future candidates, which would create a “Nine Star” designation for finishers of an even more exclusive club. Whether either race clears the same bar Tokyo did, years of sustained elite performance and field growth before formal recognition, remains to be seen.

Should marathon running’s most prestigious series continue expanding to include more global regions, or does adding races risk diluting the exclusivity that makes completing the current Majors meaningful in the first place?