Italy’s annual track and field event promises star-studded 46th edition.
The 2026 Golden Gala Pietro Mennea, Italy’s flagship athletics meeting, returns to Rome’s Stadio Olimpico on Thursday 4 June.
The Rome event, which is broadcast live on Italian television channel RAI2, is part of the Wanda Diamond League season, an annual series of 14 track and field meetings for top athletes.
Now in its 46th year, the Golden Gala is a who’s-who from the world of international athletics, hosting 43 athletes who hold Olympic or World Championship gold medals in their career, and more than 80 global medallists in total.
The 2026 edition was presented this week at a press conference at the Stadio Olimpico by the Italian Athletics Federation (Fidal) president Stefano Mei and meeting director Marco Sicari, attended by three of the headline performers: sprint champion Marcell Jacobs, long jumper Mattia Furlani and triple jumper Andy Diaz.
The centrepiece of the programme will be the 100 metres. Alongside the already announced Noah Lyles and Marcell Jacobs – the last two Olympic 100m champions – the field now includes Botswana’s Letsile Tebogo, the Olympic 200m gold medallist; World Indoor champion Jordan Anthony of the US; reigning World Indoor 60m champion Jeremiah Azu of the UK; Olympic and World 200m silver medallist Kenny Bednarek of the US; South Africa’s Akani Simbine; and Jamaica’s Ackeem Blake.
The meeting record stands at 9.75, set by Justin Gatlin in 2015. The only previous occasion Lyles ran in Rome was in 2019, when he clocked 19.72 over 200 metres – the iconic time set in 1979 by Pietro Mennea, to whom the meeting is dedicated.
Nadia Battocletti will headline the women’s programme in the 5,000 metres, entering as world champion after winning gold at the Torun World Indoor Championships over 3,000m. She has set her sights on the European record of 14:13.42, held by Sifan Hassan – roughly ten seconds faster than the Italian record Battocletti set at the Olimpico 12 months ago. She will face Olympic 3,000m steeplechase champion Winfred Yavi of Bahrain, as well as a strong Ethiopian contingent including Freweyni Hailu and Hirut Meshesha.
In the long jump, 21-year-old Italian Mattia Furlani will seek his first individual victory at the event. The field amounts to a virtual Olympic final, including the other two Paris medallists – Greece’s Miltiadis Tentoglou and Jamaica’s Wayne Pinnock – alongside Gerson Baldé of Portugal, who edged Furlani at the Torun World Championships, and the previous Golden Gala winner Liam Adcock.
The triple jump features Andy Diaz, one of seven reigning Diamond League champions present at the meeting. A two-time World Indoor champion and Italian record holder at 17.80m, Diaz has won the Golden Gala twice before – in Florence in 2023 and in Rome in 2024 – and will bid for a third title, an achievement previously accomplished in the event’s Italian history only by steeplechaser Alessandro Lambruschini. His main rivals will be Cuba’s Lazaro Martinez and the other two World Championship medallists from Torun, Jamaica’s Jordan Scott and Algeria’s Yasser Triki.
Fidal president Mei said athletics was a uniquely global sport, noting that 216 countries are affiliated to World Athletics, and called on fans to fill the stadium to support the Italian competitors.
CONI president Luciano Buonfiglio linked the event to Italy’s bid to host the World Athletics Championships in Rome, while Sport e Salute CEO Diego Nepi Molineris, who co-organises the meeting with Fidal, described the Golden Gala as faithful to its founding vision of 1980: to stage a world-class athletics spectacle at the Olimpico.
For full details see official website. Photo credit: Asatur Yesayants / Shutterstock.com
