Algeria had its desert marathon. Who shut it down in 2003?

Lila Boudjemaa — Alger, Algérie — 2026-09-11

Note on method. Every figure in this file carries its source and its year. We worked from the official rules of the events, the dispatches of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), UNESCO fact sheets, the travel advisories of foreign ministries, the Algerian Official Journal and peer-reviewed scientific studies. We also had to correct ourselves on one point — we flag it where it belongs, without hiding it.

🏃 The idea is a good one. But three facts change everything.

You asked the right question: Morocco has its Rallye des Gazelles, so why should Algeria not have its own big desert race?

The answer is: it already had one. And that is what makes this file more interesting — and more awkward — than we believed.

Three verified facts, before going further.

First fact: the name “Sahara Marathon” is taken — and it is taken on Algerian soil. The event has existed since 2001, in the Sahrawi refugee camps near Tindouf, and it is organized by the Secretariat of State for Sport of the Sahrawi government. It brought together 200 runners from 16 countries in 2026. The organization's own website states that the refugee camps are “administered by the Polisario Front.” We will therefore not take that name: it would be an absurd confusion, on our own territory, and our adversaries would use it.

Second fact: Algeria already has desert races, and not only one.

The Sahara Algeria Treg, in Djanet, over 222 kilometers, is listed on the international trail circuit. It recorded 26 finishers in 2024. It is organized by a French company.

And there is an event nobody talks about, even though it dates from January 2026: “La Grande Aventure Sportive dans le Sud”, fourth edition, organized by the Algerian Federation of Sport and Work with the youth and sports directorates of the wilayas. Two races: 20 kilometers at Aïn Salah and 15 kilometers at Tamanrasset, around 120 participants.

That small event matters more than it looks, and we come back to it below: it gives us the administrative key to this file.

Third fact, and the most important one: Algeria already had a real international marathon in the desert, and it has disappeared. The Djanet International Marathon held its third edition in 2003, with 336 entrants, backed by the International Association of Athletics Federations, by Sonatrach and by Khalifa Airways. All of this is documented by an official dispatch from the International Association of Athletics Federations. Then the event stopped. With no public explanation.

So here is the real question, and it is not the one we thought we were asking. It is not about knowing how to create a marathon in the Algerian desert: it is about knowing why the one that existed was abandoned. As long as nobody answers that question, launching a new event would mean building on a slab whose previous building collapsed for reasons nobody knows.

📊 The objection “there is no running culture in Algeria” is false

It is the argument always thrown at us, and it does not hold up for a minute against the figures.

Look at the progression: 1,000, then 3,000, then 10,000 participants in three editions, with registration closed in a single day. And the event mobilized 80 doctors and 300 rescuers. For a volunteer organization, those are the figures of an international event.

The demand exists, then, and it is massive. What is missing is not the public: it is the event. A country where ten thousand people sign up in twenty-four hours to run does not have a sports culture problem. It has a calendar problem.

⛰️ What only Algeria can offer — and nobody has taken

We looked for the open slot. It is narrow, but it exists, and it is spectacular.

The name “high-altitude desert” is no longer available. The Atacama Crossing, in Chile, is run entirely above 2,300 meters. And the record for the world's highest marathon was set at 6,893 meters, in the Atacama Desert, on February 11, 2026. In the United States, UTAH 115 presents itself as “the American high-altitude desert.” That ground is occupied.

But here is what is available, and it is considerable: no high-altitude desert event exists on the African continent.

And Algeria possesses exactly what the world lacks: the Hoggar, and its Atakor plateau — a volcanic desert, with around 450 volcanic centers and the Tahat, which peaks at 2,918 meters.

So the positioning writes itself, and it belongs to us alone:

Africa's only high-altitude volcanic desert. And the first in the world to run in it.

That is not a slogan: it is an empty box on the world trail map, and we are the only country that can fill it. Add the Tassili n'Ajjer, listed as World Heritage, and you have a course whose equivalent no country in the world can offer — running inside an open-air museum thousands of years old.

⚠️ The warning we owe: security, and a hole in the law

We would not be honest if we wrote an enthusiastic file without saying this. This is the most serious part of the article, and it is the one to read twice.

Foreign ministries do not say the same thing, and the gap is enormous:

What this means for an organizer: France effectively authorizes what Belgium explicitly prohibits and the United States advises against entirely. A Belgian runner who lined up at an Algerian event would be contravening his own country's official advice. No insurer would cover him. That is a major commercial obstacle — and it is not settled by communication, but by demonstrating that the safety arrangements are real.

And there is a more serious problem, which we first believed insoluble — before finding the answer.

Algeria's sports law — Act No. 13-05 of July 23, 2013 — and its implementing decree — Decree No. 19-253 of September 16, 2019 — explicitly govern only events organized “in sports facilities.” Neither of those two texts says who authorizes a foot race in the desert.

But the answer exists, and it is “La Grande Aventure Sportive dans le Sud” that provides it. A foot race did take place at Aïn Salah and Tamanrasset in January 2026. It was organized by a sports federation — the Algerian Federation of Sport and Work — with the youth and sports directorates of the wilayas concerned. That is the real administrative route: the federation, plus the youth and sports directorate of the wilaya. It appears in no decree, but it works. That is already a lot — and it means a bid can be put together today, without waiting for a new text.

There remains one authority nobody expects, and its veto has already been used. In 2005, the culture minister of the time blocked the Hoggar Rally, which was to cross the Ahaggar Park. Her wording is unambiguous: “any action, of whatever nature […] is subject to her express authorization” — under the law on cultural heritage and the status of biosphere reserve. The grounds invoked were “archaeological heritage” and a “fragile animal and plant reserve.” The solution found at the time: go around the park.

So remember this, it is the first question to ask before drawing a route: does the course cross a cultural park? If so, four authorizations are needed, not one: the federation, the wilaya, the gendarmerie for security, and the Ministry of Culture. If not, the path is much shorter.

And one piece of good news, which proves it is feasible. The Hoggar Bike — a 250-kilometer raid in the Atakor — exists, with visas handled by the organizer, for around 1,250 euros per participant. So a large-scale foreign sports project is achievable in the Hoggar, and it already is. It is the proof that the territory is not closed: it is only badly explained.

We also looked into the regime applicable to drones, GPS units, binoculars and radio stations: all require prior authorization. But the status of distress beacons and satellite phones remains nowhere to be found — even though these are precisely the equipment on which the survival of an injured runner 200 kilometers from anywhere depends.

We say it bluntly: as long as those two questions are not settled by a clear text, no major international event will establish itself in Algeria. Foreign organizers do not take that risk, and they are right.

And one last thing, which has to be written. One death, one kidnapping, and the project is dead for ten years — with a devastating image thrown in. The Marathon des Sables operates in Morocco in a sealed-off zone, with considerable resources and forty years of experience. We do not have that expertise. So we must start small, and succeed small, before promising big. It is less glorious, and it is the only way to last.

🛏️ The real constraint is neither money nor security: it is beds

Here is the figure that stops every fine speech cold.

Djanet has 513 beds, spread across 5 hotels. And it hosted 24,183 tourists in 2025.

Do the math yourself: you cannot bring a thousand runners — plus their companions, the press, the organization, the rescue teams — into a town with 513 beds. It is not a question of budget or will: it is arithmetic.

And there is a discrepancy we must flag, because it is revealing. Official communications announce “47,000 to 65,000 foreign tourists in the south” for one season. Yet the most reliable figure we found — the number of visas issued on arrival — gives around 39,000 visas over three years.

And Tamanrasset, the wilaya most often cited as a Saharan hub, publishes no recent visitor data: the last dates from 2023, and it covers 639 tourists. A hub that has not published a visitor figure for three years cannot serve as the basis for an international hosting project.

A figure announced for one season against a figure recorded over three years: the gap is unexplained. We publish both, with their sources, and we leave the reader to judge. But remember this: an international event is not built on mood figures. It is built on beds, water and helicopters.

🏅 Our athletic heritage — and a correction we owe ourselves

Algeria is a nation of runners. That is not a courtesy compliment, it is an established fact — but it has to be stated precisely, because approximation on this subject is constant.

What is accurate:

• Hassiba Boulmerka: world champion in the 1,500 meters in 1991, then Olympic champion in 1992 in Barcelona. The first Algerian woman to win a title at the Games.

• Taoufik Makhloufi: Olympic gold medal in the 1,500 meters in London, in 2012.

• Djamel Sedjati: bronze medal at the Paris Games, in 2024, in the 800 meters, in 1 minute 41.50 seconds — two hundredths of a second off his own Algerian record, set in Monaco on July 12, 2024 in 1:41.46.

• Noureddine Morceli: he held the world record in the 1,500 meters. He has not held it since July 14, 1998.

And here is our correction. In a first version of this file, we presented Noureddine Morceli as “world record holder in the 1,500 meters.” That is false in the present tense, and we correct it. Since 1998 the record has belonged to another athlete, in 3 minutes 26 seconds. Morceli remains one of the greatest runners in history — but a newspaper that lets that kind of approximation through loses the right to demand precision from others.

Two further clarifications, to avoid errors that are circulating:

• Bouabdellah Tahri is not Algerian: he is French, born in Metz. We cannot list him in our record of honors.

• Taoufik Makhloufi was not a silver medalist in 2012: in London he was Olympic champion in the 1,500 meters, and he went through a disqualification episode in the 800 meters. His two silver medals date from 2016.

Why does this rigor matter for our subject? Because an Algerian event that bore these names must be able to cite them without getting them wrong. Algeria's sporting heritage is rich enough not to need arranging.

🎯 What we are asking for

1. That someone say why the Djanet International Marathon stopped. An event backed by the International Association of Athletics Federations, by Sonatrach and by an airline, with 336 entrants in 2003 — and not one press release to explain its disappearance. We are not asking for someone to blame: we are asking for an answer. Without it, any relaunch is a blind bet.

2. That the authorization procedure be written down in black and white, once and for all. We now know that a race in the far south is possible: it took place in January 2026, run by a federation and the youth and sports directorates of the wilayas. But that route is written nowhere, and a foreign organizer cannot guess it. An interministerial circular would be enough — and it would cost less than a single day's delay on a construction site.

3. That the regime for distress beacons and satellite phones be clarified, in black and white. It is the number one safety condition, and today it is the murkiest point of the applicable Algerian law.

4. That the beds be built before the runners. 513 beds in Djanet. Start with an event of 300 runners, make it succeed, then grow. Haste kills this kind of project more surely than lack of money.

5. That we invent our own name, and take the open box. Not “Sahara Marathon,” which refers to another event on our own soil. The Hoggar, the Atakor, the high-altitude volcanic desert — that is what nobody else on the African continent can claim.

[[CHART]]

Participants in the country's biggest event | 10 000 | 1 500 | runners

[[/CHART]]

A word on this chart, and it must be read carefully. It does not compare like with like: on one side an Algerian urban trail, on the other the Moroccan Marathon des Sables, which is a desert event of an entirely different nature. So what it measures is not sporting performance: it is public appetite. And on that ground, ten thousand registrations closed in twenty-four hours in Algiers say one simple thing: when an event exists in Algeria, Algerians respond.

🏛️ Decision-makers: the seven decisions our correspondents ask you to take

This file began with an intuition, and it ends with a question nobody has answered for twenty-three years: why did the Djanet International Marathon stop after 2003?

We are not asking to be listened to. We are asking for decisions. Five of these seven decisions do not cost a dinar: they require an answer, a text, or a publication.

Two things we set aside, and we say so. First, we had written that Noureddine Morceli was world record holder in the 1,500 meters: that is false in the present tense, he has not held that record since July 14, 1998 — and the article corrects it publicly. Second, we had first believed that no text indicated who authorizes a race in the desert: the answer existed, it is the federation plus youth and sports directorate of the wilayas route. We corrected it rather than keeping it, because it was more flattering to our argument.

The timeline, now. Decisions 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 are taken by circular, written answer or publication — with no budget. Decisions 6 and 7 require a plan and an arbitration. The Algerian Sahara is the largest stadium in the world. It is empty. It is not the desert that is empty: it is our calendar.

🎯 The conclusion: the desert is not empty, the calendar is

We write this file from Algiers, and we have a conviction, which the figures support: Algeria does not need to invent anything. It has the vastest desert in Africa, the continent's only high-altitude volcanic desert, sites listed as World Heritage, a youth that signs up en masse as soon as a race is offered, and a past — a real past, documented by the International Association of Athletics Federations — of top-level Saharan racing.

All of it exists. All of it is dormant.

What is missing comes down to three words: an explanation, a decree, beds. An explanation for the 2003 shutdown. A decree that says who authorizes. And beds to host those who will come.

The Algerian Sahara is the largest stadium in the world. It is empty. It is not the desert that is empty: it is our calendar.

📚 All the sources — so that everyone can check

Events and organizers — Sahara Marathon, 2026 edition, official website of the organization (200 runners, 16 countries, camps administered by the Polisario Front); Sahara Algeria Treg, Djanet, 222 kilometers, 2024 results; Djanet International Marathon, official dispatch of the International Association of Athletics Federations, 3^rd edition 2003, 336 entrants; Algiers Urban Trail, 2026 participation data reported by APS, June 15, 2026; Trail Azro N'Thor, Djurdjura, 2026 edition; Marathon des Sables, official rules, 2026 edition.

International comparisons — Atacama Crossing (Chile, entirely above 2,300 meters); record for the world's highest marathon, 6,893 meters, Atacama Desert, February 11, 2026; UTAH 115 (United States); Marathon des Sables, organization and logistics.

Security — travel advisories of France (July 14, 2026), the United States, Belgium and Switzerland.

Algerian law — Act No. 13-05 of July 23, 2013 on the organization and development of physical and sports activities; Executive Decree No. 19-253 of September 16, 2019. Regime for distress beacons and satellite phones: NOT FOUND.

Heritage — UNESCO, Tassili n'Ajjer; surveys of the Hoggar and the Atakor plateau, Tahat summit at 2,918 meters; verified records of Hassiba Boulmerka, Noureddine Morceli, Taoufik Makhloufi and Djamel Sedjati.

Final note on method. We set aside from this article: the entry fee of the 2026 Marathon des Sables (verified at the source, but the page has since been withdrawn — a reader could not find it again); the “45 million euros in economic impact” attributed to a major international mountain event (no published methodology, therefore unverifiable); and any claim about the number of rock paintings in the Tassili taken outside the official UNESCO fact sheets.