The Los Angeles Marathon is one of the largest and most geographically ambitious marathons in the United States, and unlike most major-city races, it does not loop back to where it started. It runs in a single line across Los Angeles, from Dodger Stadium in Elysian Park to Century City on the city's Westside, stitching together neighborhoods that most visitors, and plenty of Angelenos, never experience back to back on foot. If you're deciding whether to run it, the honest pitch is that this is less a single-neighborhood showcase like some marathons and more a cross-section of an entire city, with the logistics and the hills to match.

Stadium to the Stars, not Stadium to the Sea

For years the race was known as 'Stadium to the Sea,' finishing at the Santa Monica Pier with the Pacific Ocean as a backdrop. That course is no longer run. Since 2021 the marathon has used the 'Stadium to the Stars' route, which still starts at Dodger Stadium but finishes on Avenue of the Stars in Century City instead of at the beach. Organizers have attributed the change to the rising cost of staging the finish-line festival in Santa Monica. If you've read an older guide, or talked to someone who ran LA a decade ago, this is the single most important update: the course they remember and the course you'll run are not the same race.

What hasn't changed is the ambition of the route itself. Between the two endpoints, runners pass through Chinatown, the downtown civic core near City Hall and the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Echo Park and Silver Lake, Hollywood Boulevard past the Walk of Fame, the Sunset Strip through West Hollywood, and Beverly Hills along Rodeo Drive, before a final stretch through Westwood and Brentwood loops the course back into Century City for the finish.

Who this race is for

This isn't a pancake-flat, chase-a-personal-best course, and it isn't trying to be. The route is officially described as rolling rather than flat, with real climbing built into the first half and a genuine downhill advantage saved for the back half. Runners who like a course that keeps giving them something new to look at, and who don't mind pacing by effort rather than by a fixed number on their watch, tend to enjoy LA the most. Runners chasing a flat-course personal best on tired legs from an earlier training cycle may want to look elsewhere, or at least recalibrate expectations for the climbs in the opening miles.

It's also a genuinely accessible race in one specific sense: entry doesn't require a qualifying time or a lottery win. That openness, combined with the size of the field, is part of why the race has become a rite of passage for thousands of Los Angeles Unified School District students each year through the Students Run LA program, a nonprofit that trains middle and high schoolers toward the marathon at no cost to their families. On race morning, a meaningful share of the field is teenagers who have been training for this exact day for months.

A race that's outlasted several owners

The modern Los Angeles Marathon dates back to 1986, launched in the afterglow of the 1984 Olympics as a way to keep some of that civic energy going. It drew one of the largest debut fields any first-time marathon had seen, and it has run every year since — even the pandemic didn't stop it, though the 2021 edition was pushed back to November and gave registrants who couldn't make it the option of running that one virtually. Ownership has changed hands more than once: the race moved from its founders to a private operator in the 2000s, then to Frank McCourt, the former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, whose Conqur Endurance Group ran it before McCourt donated the event to the McCourt Foundation, which owns and operates the race today. Each year the marathon also recognizes its Legacy Runners, the small group of finishers who have completed every edition since 1986.

What to plan around

Because the start and finish sit on opposite sides of the city, this is a race where logistics deserve as much attention as training. A few things worth building into your plan early:

• Registration is open entry with no lottery and no qualifying time, but the field is large and popular price tiers do sell out, so registering earlier is both cheaper and safer than waiting.
• You will need a transportation plan to get from your hotel to Dodger Stadium before dawn, since the start and finish aren't within walking distance of each other the way they are at many other majors.
• March weather in Los Angeles is generally mild, but it can run warm, and in at least one recent edition, race-day heat was significant enough that organizers offered runners an early-finish option partway through the course. Don't assume the coastal city stays cool all morning.
• The course rewards patience early and rewards confidence late — the toughest climbing comes in the first half, and the final miles trend downhill back into Century City.

The rest of this guide series breaks the race down further: the course and neighborhoods mile by mile, the elevation profile in detail, historical weather patterns, pacing strategy for the rolling terrain, how registration and pricing actually work, and where to stay and how to get around given the point-to-point layout. This page's own data card above has the verified specifics on the course and climate — the guides below fill in what those numbers can't tell you.