After the end of the spring World Marathon Majors, it’s a great time to take stock and look at who the best marathoners in the world are right now. 📊 In some ways, defining “right now” is just as difficult as forecasting out to 2028. Do we only consider races run in 2026? How long ago is too long to be relevant? Ultimately, it’s a bit hard to say definitively, but we tried our best to focus on the last 12 months of racing. As always, marathoning accomplishments fall into two main buckets: how fast you run and who you beat. Even though this is a snapshot of world marathoning as it currently stands in April 2026, you’ll see a slight bias toward runners who’ve proven they can be consistently good over intermittently great—which of course slightly hurts the two marathoners on this list who’ve only run one marathon. Here’s where we landed: 5️⃣ simbualphonce 4️⃣ yomif_kejelcha 3️⃣ jacob_kiplimo 2️⃣ johnkorir_ 1️⃣ sabastiansawe Honorable mentions: Benson Kipruto (2025 NYC champ; thi...