If you’ve spent any time on the trails around Lookout Mountain, the River to Clouds system, or Cloudland Canyon, this news isn’t a surprise so much as a confirmation and excitement.

UTMB World Series announced that Chattanooga will host the first-ever Southern U.S. event on the circuit, with Ultra Trail Chattanooga by UTMB set for June 4-6, 2027. With three distances; the 100K, 50K, and 20K, it will run through terrain that is absolutely world-class.

The Course

The headline distance, the 100K, is a point-to-point route built almost entirely on the River to Clouds Trail System, linking downtown Chattanooga to Cloudland Canyon State Park just over the Georgia line. Most of the mileage sits on Lookout Mountain, and the finish drops runners into Cloudland Canyon’s sandstone cliffs and waterfalls. Truly scenic and about the best way to end 62 miles, east of the Rockies.

The 50K and 20K stay closer to home, starting and finishing near the new basecamp by Erlanger Park on the riverfront, with route options through the region’s technical singletrack and panoramic overlooks. Race organizers are framing it as a blend of urban energy and remote mountain adventure, and based on the terrain, it’s genuinely how Chattanooga trail running works. You’re downtown one minute and buried in hardwood forest the next.

Here’s the breakdown by the numbers:

Distance	Race Day	Elevation Gain	Running Stones
100K	June 5	2,436 M+	3
50K	June 5	1,163 M+	2
20K	June 6	410 M+	1

The vert on the 100K is roughly 2,436 meters, or right around 8,000 feet, over 62 miles and a real data point for the Black Canyon comparison (more on that below). It’s a rolling, runnable profile, not some mountain-goat course. And with three Running Stones on the line, the 100K should see some real heavyweights at the race with battling for a Mont-Blanc qualifier.

The event will also lean on the local trail infrastructure that’s already doing the work year-round, partnering with groups like Lookout Mountain Conservancy, Lula Lake Land Trust, SORBA Chattanooga, Wild Trails, Outdoor Chattanooga, and Reflection Riding for ongoing stewardship. That matters — this isn’t a race parachuting into a place with no existing trail culture. It’s the opposite.

Why This Is Bigger Than One Race Weekend

For a long time, if you wanted to chase Running Stones or a UTMB Mont-Blanc qualifier, your options in the U.S. clustered out West or in the Northeast.

The Southeast, despite having some of the best technical trail running in the country hiding in plain sight in Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, and beyond had no seat at that table which we always thought was weird. Chattanooga becoming the tenth U.S. stop on the World Series changes that math for a huge chunk of the regional trail community who’ve been driving eight-plus hours to get a shot at a qualifier.

What’s also interesting is the Ironman World Championships will take place in Chattanooga starting in 2027 too, making it all of a sudden this huge destination.

Anyway, it’s also a signal about how UTMB is thinking about growth. This isn’t just an add-on race, but quickly a major race and acknowledgment that the trail running boom happening across the Southeast over the past several years has produced a community and a trail network worth building a flagship event around.

Local Take: This Course Profile Rhymes With Black Canyon

Talking to folks who know Lookout Mountain and the surrounding terrain well, the comparison that keeps coming up is Black Canyon 100K — but flip it East.

Same idea: rolling, runnable vert with technical stretches mixed in, not a pure vertical slugfest, and a course that rewards pacing discipline over raw climbing power. If that read holds up once the actual course map drops, this could shape up as a legitimately fast, tactical 100K rather than a grind.

The other piece of local knowledge nobody’s sugarcoating is that June in Chattanooga is no joke. Early June in the Tennessee River Valley means heat and humidity stacking on top of exposed ridgeline sections, and anyone targeting this race needs to start heat-training way in advance, not in May.

Registration Details

Priority registration opens Aug. 18, with general registration following on Aug. 20 at chattanooga.utmb.world/register. All three distances currently show as “opening soon” on the official race site. Given how fast World Series races in growth markets tend to fill, if this is on your radar, don’t wait around on it.

And here is the good part too. Half of every UTMB Community Bibs registration goes directly to a local charity chosen by the race team — a small reminder that this event is trying to build roots in Chattanooga, not just borrow the scenery for a weekend and take off.

This is great news.