The fascinating story behind the 2025 NYC marathon medal

Few objects embody the endurance of the human spirit better than a medal. This Sunday, when the projected 55,000 breathless souls cross the finishing line of the annual TCS New York City marathon, they will be receive a one-of-a-kind medal to remember this achievement.

The NYC marathon medal looks different every year. While many previous versions have attempted to etch the experience onto metal, the 2025 medal takes an even more tangible approach. At first glance, the surface of the new medal appears to be brushed with an array of diagonal stripes. But flip it on its side, and you will notice that the stripes are ribbed, and they reflect the actual elevation of the five-borough course. The brutal start up the Verrazzano Bridge; the seemingly endless 5th Avenue incline, the rolling hills of Central Park—these topographies can be felt (or re-felt) at the glide of a finger.

The medal is an exquisite piece of design that celebrates the experience of running a marathon through touch. And it has been so popular since it was unveiled that it has even placated the prickliest of armchair critics. “In the 10 years I’ve been at this company, it’s the best reaction we’ve ever seen,” says Thomas Cabus, the creative director at nonprofit New York Road Runners, who designed this year’s medal. “All of them are positive, which is rare.”

“Can we jazz it up a bit?”

The TCS NYC marathon medal archive, on display at the NYRR Run Center, shows how wildly the design of marathon medals has been over the years. The 2005 medal showed a crowd of runners huddled against the Verrazzano Bridge. The 2018 medal was shaped like an apple.

But some things never change: the TCS logo has to feature; the five boroughs have to be listed (in this case on the back of the medal) and there has to be room for willing finishers to get their initials engraved. Each medal also features braille lettering on the back.

Since NYRR rebranded in 2023—courtesy of brand consultancy Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv—the medal designers also have to include a variation of the new motif, namely diagonal stripes to symbolize the five boroughs coming together on marathon day.

The idea for the 2025 medal was born while the team was experimenting with those diagonal stripes. “The idea was, can we jazz it up a little bit?” recalls Keziah Makoundou, lead designer at NYRR, who codesigned the medal alongside Cabus. Once the idea materialized, the team took an official graphic of the course and extruded that to a three-dimensional shape. The elevation map was born.

Designing a time capsule

Since the medal was unveiled in early October, it has been so popular that some runners who were planning on deferring are now considering walking the marathon just to get it. Others have called for this medal to become the signature medal of the TCS NYC marathon.

But what makes each medal so special is precisely the fact that it acts as a time capsule from a particular race. Tomasz Sablinski, a 69-year-old running aficionado who splits his time between New York City and New Jersey, has run over 80 marathons across North America and Europe. This year’s five-borough race will be his 12th.

“I must have over 100 medals,” he told me in an email. “And with so many of them, it’s fun when a medal stands out from the others because of its unusual design, or if it’s specifically related to the course it’s from.”

Sablinski is particularly fond of some of his wooden medals, but he loves this year’s design for the NYC marathon medal because it is so directly tied to the course. “You won’t be able to look at this year’s medal without recalling the elevation of the bridges around the boroughs,” he says.

When Sablinski crosses the finishing line on November 2, Cabus and Makoundou will be there to watch his and the reaction of 55,000 others when they receive their well-earned medal. And with so much positive feedback already, they feel both proud and pressured to top themselves next year. “Runners are very difficult people to please, so it’s like a challenge,” says Makoundou, before adding with a chuckle: “I don’t know what we’re going to do next year.”

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