Paris Marathon

The Paris Marathon, one of Europe's largest city races with several tens of thousands of runners, crosses almost the whole capital from east to west, creating one of the biggest road closure operations of the Paris year.

The Paris Marathon, now officially called the ASICS Marathon de Paris, will celebrate its fiftieth edition on Sunday 4 April 2027, a special anniversary for this city race, which has become over the decades one of the capital's most popular sporting events, bringing together several tens of thousands of runners from France and around the world every year. A running exhibition, the Run Experience, is traditionally held on the three days before the race so that participants can collect their race numbers.

The marathon's iconic course crosses Paris from east to west along a now well-established route: start on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées at Place Charles-de-Gaulle, then via Concorde, Rue de Rivoli and Bastille, through the Bois de Vincennes in the east before heading back to western Paris for a finish in the Bois de Boulogne, on Avenue Foch, a route that covers a large part of the capital's central and outer arrondissements over more than forty-two kilometres.

The scale of the course requires one of the biggest road closure operations of the Paris year, affecting almost the whole east-west axis of the capital throughout the morning and much of the afternoon on race day, with roads gradually reopening as the last runners pass, a process that can take several hours depending on the section of the course.

For anyone who needs to travel in Paris on marathon day, whether to reach an airport, a business meeting or simply to cross the capital from north to south, precise knowledge of the course and of the successive closure times of each section becomes essential, as a vehicle without detailed knowledge of these constraints risks being stuck for a long time or having to make a very long detour around the closed course.

Spectators who come to cheer on a loved one taking part, as well as the families of international runners who travel specifically for the occasion, also create specific transport needs, between the early-morning drop-off near the start on the Champs-Élysées and collecting the runner at the finish in the Bois de Boulogne, two points of the course several kilometres apart that require a well-planned bypass route for a chauffeur who cannot use the closed course directly.

Every year, LimoAirportGroup plans around the precise road closures published by the Paris police prefecture to organise its clients' journeys on marathon day, whether reaching an airport while avoiding the course, accompanying a family between the start and the finish, or simply crossing Paris on this particular Sunday with a bypass route optimised according to how the race is progressing.