Overview The Jersey City Marathon and Half Marathon is a Boston-qualifying road race that starts and finishes at Newport, across the Hudson from Manhattan, and its field roughly doubled in two years, from about 5,500 runners in 2024 to more than 11,000 registered for 2026. Jersey City Road Runners, a nonprofit, stages it with the City of Jersey City, and the first edition ran in 2023. The course is certified and sanctioned by USA Track and Field, and the organizers bill it as one of the flattest and fastest in the country. Precision Sports Entertainment sells its partnerships. On site Race weekend opens with a two-day expo where runners collect their bibs; in 2025 it ran at the Newport Centre Mall and the organizers counted more than 15,000 visitors. On race morning in 2026 the gun went at 7 a.m. at Newport Center, across from the Newport PATH station. The course runs through the city's neighborhoods with the Manhattan skyline across the water, has narrow stretches, rail tracks and two crossover sections, and marathoners run a second loop before they finish at Newport Green. Runners have to hold a 15-minute-mile pace. Past the line sit a recovery zone every finisher walks through and a finish-line festival, where the organizers counted about 25,000 spectators in 2025. Audience The field is mostly local: in the organizers' 2025 survey, 12% of runners lived in Jersey City, 64% in New Jersey and 87% in the New York tri-state area. The rest travel, from 46 states and 36 countries in 2025 and from all 50 states in 2026. The organizers call race day the city's largest block party. Track record Registered runners: about 5,500 in 2024, just under 10,000 in 2025, more than 11,000 in 2026. The 2026 race carried a $50,000 prize purse. Joe Maguire of Philadelphia won the marathon in 2:21:09 and Hannah McGovern of Branchburg, New Jersey in 2:33:40, and Josh Izewski took the half in 1:02:09. Brand presence The race sells its name and its parts. A title partner goes in front of the race name and a presenting partner after it, each with a logo lock-up and category exclusivity, and there are naming rights on the finish-line festival, the expo, the spectator zone along the course and the recovery zone. The hydration partner pours its product at water stations and gets a tent after the race, and the official host hotel can throw the pre-race pasta dinner and offer every registrant a discount code. The 2025 partner wall ran from Newport and RWJBarnabas Health to Goya, Gatorade, Lord Abbett and ShopRite's Inserra Supermarkets.