Santa Pola half marathon 2027
Sunday 24 January, and there is a 10K the evening before. Two things will cost you if you find them out late: the entry fee climbs on fixed dates, and there is no airport bus on the Sunday you race.
It is a two-day event
Most listings mention the half and stop there. There are two races, and the gap between them is what decides where you sleep.
| Race | Day | Start |
|---|---|---|
| 10K | Saturday 23 January 2027 | 17:00 |
| Half marathon (21K) | Sunday 24 January 2027 | 10:30 |
Dates and start times from mitjasantapola.com, the organisers' own site, checked in August 2026.
The entry fee goes up on fixed dates
This is not a vague «book early». It is a published ladder, and every step is a date. For the half marathon:
| Entry | Window | |
|---|---|---|
| €23 | First 1,000 entries | Sold out |
| €27 | Until 31 August 2026 | |
| €30 | Until 31 October 2026 | |
| €33 | Until 31 December 2026 | |
| €40 | Until 18 January 2027 | Last window |
An RFEA licence is compulsory and is not included in the entry fee. If you are not licensed with the Spanish federation you buy a day licence on top, and it is the detail foreign entrants most often miss. Ask before you pay, not after.
Ladder taken from the official 21K entry page in August 2026, when the €23 tier had already sold out. Prices move, so confirm there before paying — that page is the only one that is always current.
Why people come here for a personal best
The 21.097 m course is homologated by the Spanish athletics federation. It starts on Avenida Pérez Ojeda, runs through the town and along the seafront, and has almost no elevation change at all. That is the whole appeal: it is known across Europe as one of the flattest and fastest halves on the calendar, and the organisers put the field at close to 10,000 runners.
The one variable is the wind. You are running beside the sea in January on a stretch of coast known for it — the same wind that makes Santa Pola a windsurfing town. Flat does not mean sheltered.
We do not reproduce the course map: the official route page publishes it as an image, and a route redrawn from memory is worse than no route at all.
Getting there, and the Sunday problem
The direct bus from Alicante airport does not run on Sundays. Not a reduced service — none at all. And the half marathon starts on Sunday at 10:30. If you fly in on race morning you cannot reach the start by bus.
Which leaves three sane options: fly in on the Saturday and take the bus, take a taxi, or hire a car. The airport is close — about 15 km — so a taxi is not the disaster it would be elsewhere.
A hire car makes more sense for this trip than for a normal visit, and the reason is the race and not the town: you land on a January Saturday, you need to be somewhere at 10:30 on Sunday morning, and you may want to get to the start without depending on anything.
No bus times on this page, on purpose. The timetable changes by season and the one we have verified is the summer one. Closer to the date, the winter times will be in our airport guide, with the fare and the taxi alternative.
Where to stay, and why the Saturday night matters
Look at the two start times again. The 10K goes at 17:00 on Saturday and the half at 10:30 on Sunday. Whichever you are running, the night you need in Santa Pola is the Saturday — and if you are doing both, there is no alternative to it.
And then the arithmetic that catches people out. The organisers describe a field of close to 10,000 runners. Santa Pola is a town with a handful of hotels and hostales, most of them small. The beds do not appear because the race does: whatever exists in January is what there is, and the walkable ones go months ahead. This is the one race weekend where booking late genuinely means staying in another town.
The first link is our own guide to the zones and it earns us nothing. It is first because the useful question is which part of town, and the start line is on the seafront: within walking distance of it is worth more on a race morning than any other feature.
In short
Enter through the official site before the next price step. Come in on the Saturday, not the Sunday, because the bus does not run on race day. Book a bed within walking distance of the seafront, early. And sort the RFEA licence before you turn up.
If you are making a weekend of it, the boat to Tabarca island runs in winter too and is a good Saturday morning before an evening 10K — a walk on a walled island rather than a day on your feet in town.
Race dates, start times and entry prices come from the organisers' own site and were checked in August 2026 — confirm them there before paying, and expect the price ladder to have moved on. Some links on this page are affiliate links: if you book through them we earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. The entry itself is not one of them, and neither is the guide to the zones.