🎉 Registration is now open! Early Bird pricing ends 11/1 · Register now →
Three days, six races, one city — rocks and roots in Walking Purchase Park, mascot high‑fives at the Kids Run finish, Main Street and the Monocacy underfoot, and a finish line party in the shadow of the blast furnaces.
From Friday afternoon on the trails to Sunday's half marathon finish, there's a distance for every pace and every level — and a sponsor cheering it on.
Friday
Saturday
Saturday
Saturday
Sunday
Sunday
All Weekend
All Weekend
All Weekend
A dedicated stretch of the start/finish festival grounds set aside just for Lehigh Valley run clubs — and any clubs traveling in to join them. Pitch a tent, fly your colors, and make Run Club Row your crew's home base for the whole weekend.
Run Club Row returns for 2027. Details on reserving your club’s tent space are coming soon.
Three coworkers, one half marathon, and a four-foot trophy with your company’s name on it. Relay teams split the 13.1-mile course into two five-mile legs and a 5K — and the fastest team in the field is crowned the fastest company in the Lehigh Valley.
Entering is simple: register a three-person relay team and put your company’s name at the front of the team name — for example, B. Braun FastFlash. That’s all it takes to be in the running for the Cup.
Enter Your Company’s Team →Take the stress out of the early morning routine with private restrooms, gear check, continental breakfast items and more before and after your big moment.
Registration add-on for the Half Marathon, Triple Play, or Quadruple Play · $99
Celebrate year five with an exclusive Fifth Anniversary Festival VIP windbreaker, plus a Festival VIP winter hat and gloves.
13.1 miles through Bethlehem is better with a crowd. These are the spots where the city shows up loudest — and where your friends and family should plant themselves.
High-energy send-off at the base of the historic blast furnaces.
Right where the courses turn back toward the finish — a guaranteed loud stretch on every race.
A Half Marathon-only stop, roughly two-thirds of the way through the course.
The loudest zone of all: the finish-line party with live DJ, food, and drinks.
The half marathon is a lap around 280 years of Bethlehem — the Moravian settlement, the steel plant, and the greenway the city is building now. Every mile tells part of the story.
The blast furnaces above the Lehigh — the river the half marathon crosses twice.
The half crosses the footbridge over the Monocacy Creek into the Colonial Industrial Quarter — past the 1761 Tannery and the site of the Bethlehem Waterworks, the first pump-driven municipal water system in North America — then climbs Church and High Streets through the settlement the Moravians founded in 1741. In 2024 that district was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
You start and finish beneath five blast furnaces — the two tallest over 230 feet, the oldest dating to 1915 — that last ran on November 18, 1995. The steel made on this site went into the Golden Gate Bridge and the Empire State Building. Today it’s a ten-acre arts campus, and the same skyline watches over the finish line party on the Levitt Lawn.
The middle of the course runs north through the neighborhoods and out along the Monocacy Trail, past the restored grist mill at Illick’s Mill and through Monocacy Park. This is the Bethlehem being built now — parks, trails, and greenway stitched between the city’s two halves, and the quietest, prettiest miles of the day.
USATF-certified course PA23026NP · 21.0975 km · 381′ high point, 210′ low
Here's what's on, hour by hour.
Every registration and every dollar raised helps fund the American Cancer Society's mission — including breast cancer awareness and research initiatives. The festival has raised more than $80,000 for the ACS. Run your race, and it counts for something bigger than a finish time.
Fundraise for ACS →Look up your time and find your race photos from every year of the festival. 2027 will be our fifth annual — come add another year to the list.
Results by Second Wind Timing · Photos by Pat Hendrick
The Jefferson Bethlehem Running Festival is made possible by partners who believe in this city and this community.
Presenting sponsor of the Jefferson Bethlehem Running Festival.
