Edinburgh runner Josh Kerr has been nominated for World Athlete of the Year after an outstanding season on the track. The 28-year-old is the only British name among the 20 nominees announced by World Athletics, and the only athlete from these shores in contention for the sport’s biggest individual honour this year.
Kerr’s year has been packed with major results. In March he won the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Torun, Poland. In July he broke the long-standing world mile record in London, and two weeks later he won the mile for Scotland at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, crossing the line first in the final at Scotstoun Stadium on 1 August. Last month he added the 1500m title at the first World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Budapest, a victory that earned him the $150,000 prize.
The nominees, 10 women and 10 men, were chosen by an international panel of athletics experts, and Kerr faces strong competition from a group of rivals who have also rewritten the record books this year. Sweden’s Mondo Duplantis pushed the pole vault world record up to 6.31 metres this year. Brazil’s Alison dos Santos set a new 400m hurdles world record of 45.80 seconds. Kenya’s Sabastian Sawe won the London Marathon in a world record 1hr 59min 30sec, becoming the first man to run under two hours in a marathon that counts for record purposes.
The final order, from first to 10th, will be decided by a four-way vote that closes on 17 October. Each part carries 25 per cent of the total, so no single group can decide the outcome. World Athletics fans cast their votes through a survey. The other three groups are athletes who competed at World Athletics Series events in 2026, members of the media, and what the governing body calls the wider World Athletics family.
Once the votes are counted, the shortlist will be reduced to three men and three women. The winners will be revealed in Monaco on 29 November. A place in the final three would cap a year in which Kerr has won a world indoor title, set a world record over the mile, claimed the Ultimate Championship crown in Budapest and delivered a Commonwealth gold for Scotland in front of a home crowd in Glasgow. He will learn on 29 November whether that body of work is enough to beat the strongest field of contenders.
