Every autumn, two cities agree to close their best streets and hand them over to runners. The 2026 Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon Weekend takes over Minneapolis and Saint Paul from Friday, October 2 through Sunday, October 4, and organizers expect more than 30,000 people to run at least one of its races.
Here is the part worth knowing in early August: the marathon itself and the Medtronic TC 10 Mile are already sold out to the general public. Registration is closed. What is still very much bookable — for now — is a place to sleep the night before.
What is actually happening, October 2–4
Friday, October 2 — The Health & Fitness Expo opens at the Saint Paul RiverCentre, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. This is packet pickup, and it matters: there is no race-morning packet pickup for the marathon or the 10 Mile. No exceptions.
Saturday, October 3 — The day belongs to the State Capitol grounds in Saint Paul. The TC 10K goes off at 7:30 a.m. as the 2026 USATF 10K Championships, with a $43,000 professional prize purse and an out-and-back down Summit Avenue. The TC 5K follows at 9 a.m., and the free TC Family Events — Diaper Dash, Toddler Trot, half mile and mile — start at 10 a.m. The Expo runs 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Sunday, October 4 — Minneapolis morning. The Medtronic TC 10 Mile, the “Shortcut to the Capitol,” starts at 7 a.m. from 400 Portland Avenue. The TC Half Marathon for More, a charity-fundraising race capped at 500 runners, is scheduled for 7:40 a.m. And the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon starts at 8 a.m. from 615 South 6th Street.
Worth repeating for families: kids 18 and under run free in every in-person event.
A start line about a mile and a half from the front porch
300 Clifton sits in Loring Park, on the quiet edge of downtown Minneapolis — roughly a mile and a half from where the marathon starts. On a cool October morning that is a warm-up walk, or a five-minute ride. (Directions and parking live on our location page.)
The course leaves downtown near U.S. Bank Stadium and does what earned it the name The Most Beautiful Urban Marathon in America — a long, leafy arc past Lake of the Isles, Bde Maka Ska, Lake Harriet and Lake Nokomis, then north along the Mississippi, across into Saint Paul, and east up Summit Avenue to finish at the Minnesota State Capitol. The climb from mile 21 to mile 23 is the one everybody warns you about. The last half mile is downhill, which is the organizers’ idea of an apology.
Two logistics notes that make the weekend easier from here: every Marathon Weekend participant gets free Metro Transit bus and light rail on Sunday, October 4 by showing a bib, and the marathon’s course limit is six hours and 30 minutes, with services closing at 2:50 p.m.
2026 is the last early-October marathon
Beginning in 2027, Marathon Weekend moves to a mid-October window of October 10–17 in the hope of steadier race-day weather. That makes 2026 the final running on the first weekend of October — the date this race has held since 1982.
That first Twin Cities Marathon, on October 3, 1982, drew 4,563 entrants and an estimated 100,000 spectators, and it had a title sponsor familiar to anyone who knows this city’s flour-milling history: Pillsbury. The company’s chairman fired the starter pistol. Today the Charles S. Pillsbury mansion a few blocks away is the Pillsbury Club — and every 300 Clifton guest receives a $20 dining voucher for each night of their stay to use there, plus a $20 Minneapolis Trolley voucher. See the current list on the vouchers page.
What a historic mansion does for tired legs
Hotels give you a room. A mansion gives you somewhere to fall apart gracefully.
The garden hot tub runs all four seasons — massaging jets, open sky, October air. It is a better recovery plan than a bathtub and a foam roller, and you can sit in it under the stars the night you finish.
Downstairs, Gertrude’s Cistern + Video Lounge is the mansion’s speakeasy and haunted movie room, fitted with heated, massaging, reclining stadium seating. Twenty-six point two miles is a lot of standing up. This is the opposite of that. If the ghost stories keep you up, that is between you and the house.
Upstairs, the guest rooms each have their own character — the Crystal Mansion Room, the Grand Edwardian, the Georgian, the Hayloft, the Coachman’s and the Forge among them — inside the Eugene J. Carpenter Mansion, a National Register house often called the finest Georgian architecture in Minnesota. Hand-painted murals, carved fireplaces, English gardens, and a staircase that has been quietly impressing people since long before anyone thought to run 26 miles for fun.
If you came to cheer instead
Spectating is half of this weekend. The Diane and Alan Page Community Cheer Challenge turns whole neighborhoods into noise, and the lakes stretch is the most pleasant few miles of sidewalk in the city on a Sunday in October.
With a morning or an afternoon free, Loring Park is out the front door — established in 1883, with the Berger Fountain, the Garden of the Seasons and a footbridge toward the Walker’s Sculpture Garden. A Minneapolis Trolley tour is a good way to see the city without adding mileage to your legs, and the things-to-do guides are a decent shortcut to a plan. Travelling with a group that needs kitchens and a longer stay? Oakland’s on 9th is the extended-stay option downtown.
Book the room while there is one
Race weekend fills Minneapolis. Two of the weekend’s races are already gone, and the rooms tend to follow. Check dates and current packages at 300 Clifton, and come collect your medal a mile and a half from the start line.
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