The Rotterdam Running Ambassadors (RRA) is a running club for Rotterdam’s leaders and entrepreneurs. Every year they run two marathons, one of them abroad, always with Rotterdam in their hearts and on their chests. Because sport is a powerful way to network for both business and city. In 2026, the RRA celebrates its 25th anniversary by running the legendary Athens marathon.
According to Greek legend, a soldier named Pheidippides ran from the battlefield at Marathon to Athens in 490 BC, covering more than 40 kilometres, to deliver a message to his city: Νενικήκαμεν. We have defeated the Persians. The effort cost him his life: he collapsed and died upon arrival. That story lies at the heart of every marathon run anywhere in the world.
This autumn, around a hundred Rotterdammers will run that same route. Not as soldiers, but as entrepreneurs, executives, and city-makers. Welcome to the Rotterdam Running Ambassadors.
Not a drinks club. Not a traditional business club. A running club.
An idea on running shoes
It started with a simple thought: you can network while exercising. Actually much better than over drinks or at a breakfast meeting. That’s how one of the founding members once put it. And that idea, pragmatic, no-nonsense, goal-oriented, is typically Rotterdam.
More than twenty years ago, the City of Rotterdam, the Chamber of Commerce, the Port Authority, and the Rotterdam Marathon came together to found the Stichting Rotterdam Running Ambassadors. The idea: bring a group of a hundred leading and entrepreneurial Rotterdammers together around a shared goal.
Not a drinks club. Not a traditional business club. A running club
With two marathons a year as the anchor: one at home and one somewhere in the world, in a city that matters to Rotterdam. Since then, the RRA has run in Chicago, Shanghai, Istanbul, Cape Town, Havana, Bucharest, Málaga, and Lyon. Always with a business programme in the bag. Always with Rotterdam on their chest.
A hundred Rotterdammers, one goal
The strength of the RRA lies in the mix. Members are senior managers, medical professionals, executives, and entrepreneurs, varied in age, background, and sector. What connects them isn’t their job title, but the shared experience of training together, suffering through the long training weeks together, in the rain around the Kralingse Plas, along the Maas, and through the Bergse Bos, and above all, finishing together.
There’s something levelling about a running kit:
Whether you run a multinational or your own company, on the training route you’re just a runner.
That equality creates something special: real connection. And real connection strengthens professional networks in a way no gala dinner ever could.
The fifth lustrum: back to the beginning
In 2026, the RRA celebrates a milestone: its fifth lustrum, 25 years of Rotterdam Running Ambassadors. And the destination chosen for the occasion is no coincidence.
Athens. The city where the marathon began.
With nearly a hundred members, the RRA travels to Greece for the Athens The Authentic Marathon, the only marathon in the world that follows the original route Pheidippides is said to have run.
The finish line is the Panathenaic Stadium, the same marble stadium that hosted the first modern Olympic Games in 1896. There are few places on earth where running a marathon carries such meaning.
But the RRA isn’t coming just to run.
Rotterdam in Piraeus
The Friday before the marathon, 6 November, is set aside for what the RRA always does when it arrives somewhere: representing Rotterdam. Not with a PowerPoint and a handshake, but with a day that feels like the city itself: direct, warm, and meaningful.
Part of the programme takes place in Piraeus, the port city of Athens. That’s no coincidence. Rotterdam and Piraeus both rank in the global top ten of maritime cities.
Two port cities, two communities, one shared language: trade, transport, and ambition.
GasLog, an internationally leading maritime company headquartered on the Piraeus waterfront, is opening its doors to the RRA. Further conversations are underway to shape the business side of the trip.
Rotterdam Make It Happen is a partner in this story. Because this is exactly what the brand stands for: Rotterdammers going out into the world and taking their city with them.
What makes the RRA so Rotterdam?
Rotterdam is a city that asks something of you. Roll up your sleeves. No talk, just action. Not just plans, but results. The RRA embodies that. You sign up, you train twice a week, you run a marathon once or twice a year, and you carry the city with you wherever you go. That’s not a PR strategy. That’s our mentality.
Be Bold. Move Forward. Make it happen!
The RRA is always open to enthusiastic new members. In November, when nearly a hundred Rotterdammers enter the Panathenaic Stadium after 42 kilometres on the route of Pheidippides, that’s more than a personal achievement. It’s Rotterdam celebrated in the place where it all began.
RRA’s 5th lustrum during the Rotterdam Marathon’s 9th lustrum
On 12 April 2027, the RRA will of course once again take part in the 45th Rotterdam Marathon. A lustrum within a lustrum. As tradition dictates, #demooiste wraps up at ‘The Hub’ in the WTC on the pre-war stretch of the Coolsingel, and this year right up to the finish line. Want to know more about the Rotterdam Running Ambassadors or become a member? Visit runningambassadors.nl.
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