The numbers from 4th of July runs are in! While 4th of July races don’t quite compete with Turkey Trots in terms of holiday traditions, it’s become firmly established as a popular race day. And, compared to 2024, we’ve seen 4th of July growth across virtually every metric!
Increasing Races, Increasing Runners
This year’s July 4th brought more races, and more runners. While some of that impact may simply be RunSignup’s increasing market share, real growth is also happening. In 2025, there were 15.1% more races and 24.4% more participants on RunSignup than in 2024. With July 4, 2026 falling on a Saturday, we expect to see an even greater spike next year – the last time the holiday was on a Saturday was in 2020.
July 4th races are also growing in size, with 444 runners in the average 2025 race, an 8.1% increase. Additionally, the holiday is home to more mid to large races than your average weekend. While there are no mega races like you find on Thanksgiving, 53 races had more than 1,000 runners. That means 10.7% of July 4th races exceed 1,000 participants, compared to just 5.2% of races throughout the year.
Participation increases can’t be chalked up only to new races, either. When we compared July 4th races that were on our platform in both 2024 and 2025, we saw a 9.5% increase in per-race participation. Considering the average per-race growth for the first half of 2025 was just 2.3%, it’s clear that July 4th is growing faster than your regular-weekend 5K.
July 4th Runs in 49 States!
Running patriotism spanned almost the whole country, with just Delaware offering no 4th of July races on RunSignup. The most firework excited states? Ohio hosted 39 races, followed by California (33), Michigan (33), Texas (28), Colorado (23), and Pennsylvania (23).
You might expect to see only our Northern, cooler states out running in July. But 4th of July runs are big in the sunbelt, too, with the 28 Texas races joined by 22 races in Florida.
July 4th RaceDay Stats
The July 4th race day experience was seamleamless for races of all sizes. A majority of races, 55.1%, used the RaceDay CheckIn App to check-in 68.3% of all participants.
RaceDay Scoring also had a busy day, with 56,201 participants timed with the next generation timing software.
Races kept phones buzzing with finish and split notifications. All told, 114 races sent out 128,137 email and SMS notifications for finish times and split points. And the race excitement continued post-race, too: 40,232 photos were uploaded to the RunSignup Photo Platform on 7/4/2025.