The 2025 Golden Trail World Series (GTWS) drew to a close on October 12th with the Ledro Sky Trentino Grand Finale in Italy. A season that brought together more than 9,300 athletes from 63 different nationalities, crowned Madalina Florea (Romania – Scott Running) and Elhousine Elazzaoui (Morocco – NNormal) as overall winners, and achieved historic numbers in both TV coverage and digital engagement.

The GTWS visited eight countries across three continents, covering over 240 kilometers of racing and more than 16,000 meters of positive elevation across nine races. In terms of the record books, Elazzaoui made history by securing his second GTWS overall title with a perfect score of 1,000 points (the maximum possible) joining Rémi Bonnet (Switzerland – Salomon), Maude Mathys (Switzerland – Asics), and Stian Angermund (Norway) who also each hold two overall titles.

The 2025 season also saw two records fall at the Broken Arrow Skyrace (USA), where Elazzaoui improved Philemon Kiriago’s 2024 time by nearly 2 minutes, and Joyce Njeru lowered her own 2024 record by over 10 minutes. However, other historic records, such as those at Sierre-Zinal (Switzerland), owned by Kilian Jornet (Spain – NNormal) and Maude Mathys, remained untouched, preserving their legendary status.

All storylines, season highlights, and exclusive interviews with the protagonists can be revisited in the documentary Unfinished Business, available on the GTWS YouTube channel.

RECORD-BREAKING COVERAGE AND IMMERSIVE BROADCASTS

Innovating the live broadcast experience has been one of GTWS’s key objectives this season, aiming to showcase trail running in a more dynamic and immersive way. Beyond the live footage, broadcasts featured interviews and pedagogical capsules on training and performance. Visually, renewed graphics and 3D maps were introduced, alongside virtual classifications to help audiences follow the race more easily. In addition, technological advancements such as relay drones and 4G, Starlink, and WiFi aggregation significantly improved the production feed.

In 2025, six events featured live coverage. After each race, viewers could enjoy a comprehensive 23-minute highlights show, plus a final season recap. Altogether, the GTWS reached a new record of broadcasting hours, surpassing 67 hours of linear and on-demand TV content and generating nearly 18 million views exclusively across WBD platforms (HBO Max, Eurosport, discovery+, and TNT Sports).

Beyond WBD, the GTWS enjoyed extensive international exposure across 90 territories, reaching a potential audience of 687 million people through broadcasters across all five continents, including FloSports (USA and Canada), ClaroSports (Pan-America), SuperSport (across Africa), Sky (New Zealand), Fox Sports (Australia), J-Sports (Japan), iQiYi and Run Yeah (China), as well as other long-standing European channels.

CONNECTING WITH FANS BEYOND TELEVISION

Beyond television and streaming, the season was also amplified by extensive coverage across GTWS’s digital and social ecosystem, bringing fans even closer to the action and the athletes, while attracting new audiences to trail running.

The storytelling around the competition and its athletes has been one of the season’s key communication pillars. Through the creation and publication of content that dives deeper into the athletes’ stories, alongside trend-driven and pedagogical pieces offering a behind-the-scenes look at how the competition operates, the GTWS has strengthened its connection with fans. Action content remains the biggest draw for fans, with several videos surpassing three million views. Two strong examples are Pierre Galbourdin’s (France – Brooks) crazy downhill in Austria and Patrick Kipngeno’s (Kenya – Run2gether On Trail) quick ‘pit stop’ in Mexico to fix an issue with his shoe.

Throughout the year, more than 1,000 posts -more content than ever before- were published across the GTWS official social media platforms (TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Strava). The GTWS global community now exceeds 465,000 trail running enthusiasts (+24% vs 2024), and in 2025 alone generated more than 90 million video views (+83%) and 2.7 million engagements (+26%) on its official accounts.

The trail running community also has a dedicated meeting point in the GTWS Strava Club, which was relaunched in 2025 and earned the official verification badge. Its goal is to empower fans with tools to explore the official GPX tracks of every race, discover the most iconic segments across the circuit, and enjoy exclusive posts offering insights and activities from their favorite athletes.

The Golden Trail World Series official website also continued its steady growth in traffic and remains an essential pillar of the competition’s digital ecosystem. It is the key reference point for fans to check updated rankings, access event information, and follow races in real time thanks to the live-timing functionality, which has become a crucial tool for the fan experience.

A GLOBAL COVERAGE

More than 250 journalists were accredited for Golden Trail World Series races this season. This on-site coverage was further amplified by media outlets following the competition remotely, as well as press releases distributed in 5 languages with detailed previews and reports of each race. In addition, a tailored selection of images and athlete interviews was distributed to international journalists, providing curated content to support and enhance global media coverage of the series. All media assets and information are available in the new dedicated media hub developed for journalists.

After an exceptional 2025 season, fans can expect even more in the year ahead. GTWS is preparing new innovations for TV broadcasts, fresh content for both live events and digital platforms, and a calendar full of surprises.

The official 2026 calendar will be announced very soon and will feature several new circuits as GTWS continues to deliver the world’s premier trail-running spectacle.

For more information about the GTWS, visit: www.goldentrailseries.com