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On the second weekend of next April, several thousand runners will do something most marathons cannot offer: start in two different towns, in two different provinces, and finish in a third. PEAK Lake Garda 42 is a running festival wrapped around a marathon (the LG42) and a half (the LG21), staged along the shoreline where the Dolomites drop into Italy's largest lake. The sixth edition runs 9 to 11 April 2027. Registration has just opened, the first places go at early-bird prices, and history says the field fills fast. Here is why it is worth pinning to the calendar, and where to base yourself when you come.
Most marathons send you out and loop you back. This one behaves more like a journey across a border, three times over. The full marathon, the LG42, sets off from Limone sul Garda in the province of Brescia, a cliff-clinging lemon-terrace town in Lombardy. The half, the LG21, starts up north in Arco, in the province of Trento, deep in Trentino. Both fields then converge on a single finish in Malcesine, in the province of Verona, in the Veneto. Three provinces, three regions, one ribbon of tarmac between the water and the mountains.
The scenery is not the backdrop here; it is the point. You run with the lake on one side and near-vertical rock on the other, through the light and air that made this end of Garda a mecca for climbers, sailors and boardsailors long before the runners arrived. It is a course built to be remembered rather than simply survived.
The catch is the crowds. They cluster, predictably, in the same few spots between July and August. Avoiding them is mostly a question of where you base yourself and when you move.
The organisers have always sold this as a festival, and the format holds for 2027. The racing peaks on Sunday 11 April with the LG42 and LG21, but the fun starts on Friday the 9th and runs all weekend, with a programme pitched at families and supporters as much as at the athletes with numbers pinned to their chests. Saturday afternoon belongs to the youngest legs on the entry list: the LG KIDS run, a snip at 8 euros and unchanged in price right through to the close of entries.
Logistics, so often the weak point of a point-to-point race, are baked into the ticket. Entry covers organised shuttle transfers before and after the race, by bus and by ferry, ferrying runners between the two start towns and the shared finish. On a lake this shape, arriving by boat is not a gimmick. It is the sensible way to travel, and a good deal more scenic than a coach.
The pricing runs on a staircase, and the first step is the cheap one. The opening tranche of 300 places carries an early-bird tariff of 73 euros for the full LG42 and 63 euros for the half LG21, rising as the tiers fill. To protect the quality of the experience, the organisers have again capped the two Sunday races at 5,000 runners combined, and in recent years that ceiling has been reached quickly. If 2027 is on your list, treat the opening of entries as the starting gun, not the warm-up.
New for this edition is an official merchandising collection built to outlast the weekend: technical shirts for training, cotton tees for afterwards, and a first official event hoodie, all available through the online shop or at the event itself.
"PEAK Lake Garda 42 keeps growing because we have built a strong identity that goes well beyond a pure sporting event," says Jan Bruns, event manager at organiser COMMUNICO Italia. "Our aim, year after year, is to offer a complete experience that pairs the highest organisational quality with the unique setting of Lake Garda."
The half-marathon start in Arco is also, conveniently, where the lake keeps its best design beds, which makes it the smart base for a running weekend. Monastero Arx Vivendi is a 17th-century convent reworked by architects noa* into a design hotel and spa, all vaulted ceilings and a wellness pavilion of seven glass cubes; the seven-step hammam ritual was made for legs that have just covered 21 kilometres. Down the road, Vivere Suites and Rooms stacks concrete, glass and rusted steel among the vines around an infinity pool, with bikes to borrow and the water ten minutes away. For those running the full LG42, an extra night at the southern end of the lake, at the alabaster-white Aqva Boutique Hotel in Sirmione, makes a fitting reward once the medal is around your neck.
The details: PEAK Lake Garda 42, 9 to 11 April 2027. Registration open now at lakegarda42.com.
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Get the insider news and lowdown on what we've been up to, where we've been, and who we've met along the way. Be the first to discover new places and get the scoop on our favourites.