The Mountain Running World Cup is a prestigious annual series of off-road races supported by World Athletics. Held annually, it aims to bring together the world’s best off-road mountain runners along with the most prestigious mountain running events.

The format of the 2024 World Cup consists of 12 races held at 10 event venues with GOLD label, for male and female individual athletes.

There are three race categories – Short Uphill (3-9 km), Classic Mountain (10-21 km), and Long Mountain (22-50 km). Each race in each category counts equally towards the overall result of the World Cup, where the absolute winners have their best 9 race results counted towards the final World Cup ranking.

In the 2023 World Cup results, 12 different nations were represented in the top 12 places of the overall male and female final results, including the World Champions of the sport.

The World Cup is managed by the WMRA on behalf of World Athletics to support off-road racing, and as such, anti-doping controls are carried out at each World Cup race to ensure fair competition in the sport.