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UTMB race week is 24–30 August — plan around it, not into it
If your Tour du Mont Blanc overlaps the last week of August, this is the single most useful thing to know: race week runs Monday 24 to Sunday 30 August 2026, and it happens on the trail you are walking.
What is actually happening
The week opens with the PTL and the TDS on the 24th and builds to the flagship UTMB — 174 km and around 9,900 m of climb across France, Italy and Switzerland — starting from Chamonix town centre at 17:45 on Friday 28 August. Around it sit the CCC, OCC, MCC, ETC and YCC, from 14 km to 300 km. That is not one race; it is a week of them, staggered so that something is always on the move.
What it means on the ground
Three practical effects. The paths are busy — sections of the TMB become a moving queue of runners, often through the night and often at exactly the passing places where two people already do not fit. Chamonix is full, and so is everywhere within reach of it. And transport is stretched: buses, the tunnel and the valley shuttles are all carrying the event as well as you.
None of this makes the walk impossible. It makes it a different walk.
The two sensible options
Shift your dates by a week in either direction, and the trail returns to normal. Or lean into it — walk anti-clockwise so you meet the race head-on rather than being overtaken, plan short days that week, and take an evening in Chamonix to watch the start. It is a genuine spectacle if you chose it, and an ambush if you did not.
Beds are the constraint either way: race week is the hardest of the whole season for accommodation, and it is the week the alerts earn their keep.
Plan your own TMB
Set your pace, see live refuge availability, offline maps and a daily weather briefing — free.
Open the TMB planner