The national orienteering championship will gather a thousand participants in Marbella on the 22nd.

Marbella will host the final day of the Málaga Orienteering Sprint Camp 2026 (MOSC2026) on Sunday, February 22, organized by the Málaga Orienteering Club and considered one of the most important events of this sport in Spain. The MOSC2026 will take place from February 16 to 22 in various municipalities of the province of Málaga, especially in the Guadalhorce Valley, gathering a thousand athletes over seven days of competition, training, and active tourism.

The Councilor for Sports, Lisandro Vieytes, noted that this event, which includes the national orienteering championship in sprint format, "represents an opportunity to continue expanding the sports offerings of the municipality" and highlighted that "we continue to bet on competitions that promote tourism and participation, incorporating modalities that have not yet been present in the local calendar."

Vieytes, who has valued that the championship will bring this sport closer to the public and the school environment "reinforcing the role of sport as an educational tool," emphasized that "we are very satisfied with the choice of the city as the venue." In this sense, he pointed out that "Marbella continues to host unprecedented events and consolidating new alliances, in this case with the organizing club, to also incorporate this modality within the more professional scope." He also remarked that MOSC2026 "will generate an increase in visitors during the mid-season, boosting local commerce and hospitality, and contributing to the international projection of the destination."

Scorable for the international calendar

The last day of MOSC2026 will take place in the Old Town of Marbella, in an urban race format, between 07:30 and 13:00 hours and will host the Spanish Orienteering Sprint Championship and the urban Knock-Out Superfinal, both included in the international calendar and scorable as a World Ranking Event, which will attract runners from many European countries. The event will also serve as preparation for the 2026 World Sprint Championship to be held in Genoa, reinforcing the position of the Malaga province as an international destination for urban orienteering.

"The main sprint event will be held, deliberately coinciding with a world ranking event to attract international runners"

Nabil Abderrahaman Elena

Technical Director of the Málaga Orienteering Sprint Camp 2026

Meanwhile, the technical director of the event, Nabil Abderrahaman Elena, explained that the event is divided into various modalities contested in different municipalities and that in Marbella "the main sprint event will be held, deliberately coinciding with a world ranking event to attract international runners." He indicated, "several hundred foreign athletes and around a thousand participants are expected at the Sunday morning race."

He detailed that the sprint modality is the shortest and fastest in orienteering, with courses of about 12 to 15 minutes that will start in the upper part of the city to descend towards the urban center and finish in the vicinity of the municipal market. The races will start from 08:30 hours and will last approximately two hours. "Runners compete with a map and compass and must constantly choose the fastest route between streets, so decisions are made in fractions of a second and any mistake can remove them from the podium," he elaborated.