Mushers and their dogs will aim to travel 750 miles come February in their bid to win the signature event for the 2026 Yukon Quest Alaska (YQA). Teams are also going to start and end their trek in Fairbanks, organizers announced last week.
The decision marks a couple of firsts for the competition: both new mileage, as well as a new, looped version of the trail.
The distance, in particular, will separate the race from others in Alaska, said Fairbanks musher Jeff Deeter. He won the 2025 YQA 550, which went point-to-point from Fairbanks to Tok, and he plans to participate in the YQA 750 in 2026.
“It’s at least something that’s gonna make the Yukon Quest different from other races that are running in the state,” Deeter said.
Firsts have been somewhat commonplace for YQA, a Fairbanks-based nonprofit, in recent years. The Interior Alaska race has trialed a variety of distances and routes since the Alaskan and Canadian governing bodies split over disagreements about mandatory rest times. That division happened in 2022, ending the long-standing, 1,000-mile, international race between Fairbanks and Whitehorse.
In Alaska, Quest races have been inconsistent since then. In 2023, YQA put on 550-, 300- and 80-mile races; in 2024, the selection was 300-, 200- and 80-mile races; and in 2025, they were 550-, 200- and 80-mile races. The trails for the premier events have also been different in each of those years.
The slate for 2026 continues the trend of change, and drops the middle distance option, though the 80-mile “Fun Run” will remain, according to organizers.
Deeter said he thinks YQA has been “struggling to find their image” since the split. But he said the 750-mile trail, which will be the longest yet for the Fairbanks organization, seems like a positive sign.
“I hope that this route will be that new model. It, at least, I think, is a step in the right direction,” Deeter said.
On the map YQA posted to social media, the looping trail forms a shape that looks a little like a rectangle tipped up on one of its corners. From Fairbanks, it snakes northeast to Circle, before angling west along the Yukon River and hitting the northernmost point at Fort Yukon. After that, the trail goes southwest until it reaches Tanana, where it bounces back east to Nenana and then Fairbanks.
YQA expects to publish the race rules by early November, and race sign up day, typically held in late September, is now scheduled for Nov. 8 “[t]o give mushers time to plan for the new format,” organizers said last week.
Those preparations also come while the organization is still searching for a new executive director, YQA Board Vice President Dave Dalton confirmed Monday. That position has stayed vacant since former Executive Director Lisa Nilson left in March of this year for personal reasons.
Asked about the impact of that vacancy, Dalton said the organization has a “working board” right now, and that “everybody is pitching in.”
He said the board consulted with mushers about the 2026 route, but fundraising considerations also played a role in the decision-making process, especially for choosing the finish line.
“In the Fairbanks area, all businesses would like to see us start and finish in Fairbanks. So that’s what we’re hoping for – all the businesses in Fairbanks to get really involved with this race,” Dalton said.
The 2023 YQA 550 began and ended in Fairbanks, but the route that year involved turning around at Circle.
Dalton said the mushers preferred a distance longer than 500 miles for 2026. But he said they generally didn’t want the trail to swivel at Circle and return from there to Fairbanks because doing so would mean facing the infamous Eagle Summit a second time.
So, the 750-mile loop became the board’s leading plan, according to Dalton.
“And we all kind of agreed that was the route to go,” he said. “We had a lot of interest.”
Fairbanks musher Josi Shelley, who claimed second place in the 2025 YQA 550, is bringing some of that interest. She said Monday she’s also planning to run the 750-mile race next February.
Like some other mushers, Shelley uses the YQA in part to train for the 1,000-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in March. She said the extra miles next February will help give her – and maybe newer mushers – a better idea of how their teams fare further down the trail without going the full 1,000 miles.
“For mushers that … want to do the Iditarod someday, this is a great way for them to get a little bit of a taste of that longer distance,” she said.
Part of that taste will also involve rounding out the difficult, cold days with the Fairbanks finish, and Deeter, another Iditarod musher, said he’s anticipating plenty of people will show up to greet competitors who complete the journey.
“I think that Fairbanks is definitely excited about dog racing,” he said. “You know, you saw the turnout with the 2025 Iditarod starting here in Fairbanks, and it’s going to be a great way to get people out and excited about this race.”