Last Soul Ultra

The Last Soul Ultra is a backyard ultra held in Germany and built to be watched. Every runner starts the same 6.7 km loop at the top of each hour; anyone who fails to finish inside the hour, or fails to start the next one, is out, and the race continues until one runner completes a loop nobody else does. There is no distance to finish and no time limit, and the organiser says so plainly: "There is no set end time." The first edition, on 3 October 2025, started 93 runners and took 67 hours to settle.

Where it happens was deliberately withheld while it ran. The organiser would not publish the venue, saying the location was kept secret to guarantee safety and the smooth running of the event, and no spectators were admitted; its own season pages now name Bornheim as the venue of both the 2025 and 2026 races. Instead the race is followed on a 24-hour livestream in both German and English, alongside the organiser's own live dashboard and the timing platform's leaderboard. It is run by Last Soul GmbH, which the ultrarunner Kim Gottwald represents, together with the running brand rappid; Gottwald created it with the former Germany footballer André Schürrle, and won the first edition himself.

One 6.7 km loop, run from a base camp where every runner is allotted a three-metre-square pitch. The organiser publishes no course map, no surface and no location. A working headlamp is mandatory in twilight and darkness, crew may help only inside the base camp, and any assistance out on the loop means immediate disqualification.

The organiser calls it a lottery, but the field is chosen by hand rather than drawn. Anyone could apply until 15 February 2026, and in the organiser's own words it would "handpick 150 winners" from those applications. Runners selected received a personal code by email and had 48 hours to pay the 100 euro entry fee before the place was reassigned. The organiser describes the field as international ultrarunners, athletes, well-known sports personalities, content creators and selected applicants. From 2027 the race becomes the final of a Backyard Ultra World Series and is open only to qualifiers: the top 15 overall and top 5 women from each of four races, the 2026 Last Soul Ultra and new qualifiers in the USA in February, the United Kingdom in April and Australia in June 2027.