Kasese joins the world road-running map

On Saturday 22 August 2026, the fifth edition of the Tusker Lite Rwenzori Marathon ran through Kasese as a World Athletics Label Road Race. It is the first marathon in Uganda to hold the designation, and only the third in East Africa.

The label matters more than it sounds. It places Kasese on the international road-running calendar, sets standards for course measurement, timing and anti-doping, and gives elite athletes a reason to put a Ugandan race on their season plan rather than treating it as a novelty.

The event has grown steeply. Roughly 800 runners took part in 2022. By 2025 that had passed 6,000 participants drawn from 36 countries — a scale that reshapes a town of Kasese's size for a weekend, and fills every bed from Kilembe to Katunguru.

The backing is now unusually broad for a Ugandan sports event. Uganda Breweries, through Tusker Lite, remains the headline sponsor. For the 2025 edition the Ministry of Tourism, Uganda Tourism Board, Uganda Wildlife Authority and Uganda Airlines together contributed more than UGX 800 million, alongside corporate partners including Standard Chartered, Britam, Coca-Cola Beverages Uganda and East Africa Motorcenter.

That combination — a wildlife agency, a national carrier and a tourism board all funding a road race — is the clearest signal yet of how seriously Uganda is treating sports tourism as a way to move visitors into the west of the country outside the traditional safari calendar.

The question the next edition has to answer is whether the weekend converts. A runner who flies in for a Saturday race is already in Kasese, ninety minutes from Queen Elizabeth and a morning from the Rwenzori trailheads. Turning a race entry into a week in the region is the work now.