The Chicago Marathon is an annual marathon running event that takes place in Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The race is conducted in October every year. It is one of the six World Marathon Majors and is also an IAAF Gold Label marathon. From 2008 it has been officially known as the Bank of America Chicago Marathon for sponsorship reasons.
The race started in 1977 and has since been held every year except 1987. It is one of the fastest growing marathons, because of the largely fast and flat course and the weather conditions at the time of the year, which facilitates runners to achieve world records and pursue personal bests.
There is an upper limit of 45,000 for the number of participants accepted for the race. In the last six years 35,000 plus people have completed the race, and a course record of 40,801 finishers was set in 2014.
The current course record (and also the world record) of 2:00:35 was set by Kelvin Kiptum of Kenya in 2023. The women';s record was also set in 2023. Sifan Hassan from the Netherlands won the women's division in a time of 2:13:44.