Trail Caldera del Cuchillo

Event information

What we know today

The Trail Caldera del Cuchillo was due to be held on Friday 9 October 2026, and this page was written for that race. A day later, on 10 October 2026, we have found no record of it taking place: there is no 2026 event on RaceResult, where the other five races of the Tinajo Cup all are; Crónicas de Lanzarote, which covers every race of this Cup the next morning, published nothing about 9 October; and tinajo.es, which did put out the winners of September’s You Trail, has published no 2026 news item about this race.

There is no cancellation notice either, checked on 10 October 2026: the notices page of Tinajo town council is empty, and both the Cup rules and the municipal sports calendar still announce the race in the future tense. The official programme for the 2026 Fiestas del Pilar in El Cuchillo, which is where this race always sat, lists for Friday 9 October a macramé workshop at 18:00 and an envite championship at 20:00, and no trail race.

So this page will not say that it was run, and will not say that it was called off: neither of the two has been published anywhere, and either one would be us making a claim about somebody else’s race. We have asked, and we will say so here as soon as there is an answer. Below is what was published about this edition while we waited, each item with the date it was checked.

About the event

The Trail Caldera del Cuchillo is the mountain race of El Cuchillo, in Tinajo, and it is organised by the village trail club, which the official sources name in four different ways: «Club Azarug» on the Cup page, «TRAIL Azarug Tinajo» in the news item about the race, «Club Azarug Tinajo» in the 2024 one and «Club Azarud» in the timing data. In 2026 it was due to be run on Friday 9 October and it was the fifth of the six races of the Tinajo Popular Race Cup, with only the Night Run in November after it.

Falling on a Friday is not a calendar slip: recent editions have also been held on a Friday, 11 October in 2024 and 10 October in 2025. It is a late-afternoon and evening race, a village race, with the finish in El Cuchillo.

Course and distances

The distance that scores for the Cup is the long one. The 10 kilometres come from two sources: the Cup news item on tinajo.es, «el Trail Caldera El Cuchillo (10 km-9 de Octubre)», and the calendar in the Cup rules, which writes «Trail Caldera de El Cuchillo | 10 Km | 9 de Octubre | El Cuchillo». The 2026 municipal sports calendar confirms the date but publishes no distance. In 2024 and 2025 the actual distance was 10.6 km. The course goes around the Caldera de El Cuchillo, one of the volcanic cones inland in Tinajo, between fields of sand and picón.

In 2024 the programme also included a short race of 5.1 km and the Chinijos Race for the youngest. For 2026 the town council has only published the long distance, so the rest are still to be confirmed.

There is no official track published yet. The elevation gain is modest compared with the trails on the Risco or at Femés: what counts here is the loose ground and the heat still left in early October.

Registration

Entries never opened, checked on 23 September, 27 September and 3 October 2026. In 2024 they were handled through Cronoline Canarias and in 2025 the town council pointed to carreraspopularestinajo.com. That domain does respond, but over HTTP only: with https:// it never answers, checked on 30 September 2026. Anyone typing https will not get there. Over HTTP, it redirects to the umbrella entry for the Tinajo popular race Cup on Cronoline, which is not the Cuchillo one.

But the Cup rules leave a door open, and it is the most useful fact on this page today: «Excepcionalmente se permitirán inscripciones el día del evento con opción a entrar en la puntuación de Copa» (exceptionally, entries will be taken on the day of the event and can still score for the Cup). Read on 3 October 2026 in the rules PDF that hangs off the Cup entry page on Cronoline. And the same rules explain why no closing date is published: «Cada participante debe acogerse a los reglamentos y plazos particulares establecidos por cada entidad organizadora» (each entrant is bound by the rules and deadlines set by each organising body), which means the club sets the deadline, not the Cup.

There is also an entry that is open, and free, although it is not this race’s: the season entry for the whole Cup, «Del 1 ene. 2026 a las 12:00 (GMT) al 31 dic. 2026 a las 12:00 (GMT)» and «General: 0,00 €». Its «Fecha del evento» (event date) field says 31 December, which is the closing date of the Cup and not that of any race.

The sensible thing is to wait for the announcement from Club Azarug or from Tinajo town council, who are the ones that open entries. We do not treat any link as good until they publish it themselves. Checked on 23 September: sixteen days out, there was still no entry open. Until 3 October we said here that in 2024 the announcement had come five weeks ahead, and that is withdrawn: the tinajo.es news items publish no date, neither on the page nor in their metadata, so that calculation cannot be checked against the source and should never have been written. And it is worth knowing before you click: the Cup’s own entries table does have a row for the Trail Caldera El Cuchillo, but its button leads to the 2025 event on RaceResult (the system returns it under the name «Trail Caldera De El Cuchillo 2025», with that year’s distances, 10.6 and 5.1 km, and flagged as finished), while the Cup’s other five races do link to their 2026 edition. It is an old link, not an open entry period.

Checked again on 27 September 2026, twelve days out: there is still no entry page of its own for the Cuchillo. And two things changed since the previous check: the Cup link we had (copa-carreras-populares-tinajo-2) returns 404, and the live one is copa-carreras-populares-municipio-de-tinajo-2026-1, which is the season entry for the whole Cup, from 1 January to 31 December 2026, and not that of any single race. On top of that, carreraspopularestinajo.com only answers over HTTP: it is a Namecheap forward and https:// simply times out. Type it with https and you get nowhere.

Checked again on 3 October 2026, six days out: there is still no open entry for the Cuchillo and no closing date published by any official source. The Cup page on tinajo.es still announces the race («el Trail Caldera El Cuchillo (10 km-9 de Octubre) organizada por Club Azarug») and still points to carreraspopularestinajo.com, which still leads to the season entry. The Cuchillo row in the Cup table still points to the 2025 event on RaceResult. The two tinajo.es news items that come up when you search for «apertura de inscripciones Trail El Cuchillo» do respond, but they are from 2024 and from 2025: it is easy to open one and believe it is from this year.

What the fiesta programme does not say

Earlier editions of this race were held as part of the El Cuchillo fiestas. The town council wrote it like this in 2024, «enmarcada en las Fiestas de El Cuchillo» (framed within the El Cuchillo fiestas), without calling them the Pilar fiestas; this year’s programme is indeed titled El Pilar. The official programme for the 2026 fiestas, published by Tinajo town council and covering 18 September to 12 October, does not mention the trail on any of its lines, checked on 1 October 2026. For Friday 9 October the programme lists a macramé workshop at 18:00, an envite championship at 20:00 and live music at 22:30.

That does not mean the race is cancelled, and a race can be put on outside the fiesta programme. Nor can we say that nobody has announced anything: without an account, Facebook and Instagram only let you see the most recent posts, and all that was visible from the club on 3 October 2026 was a training message with no mention of the race. What could be stated, from sources you can read in full, is that six days out there was no entry of its own, no closing date, no published start time and no mention in the programme of the village where it is run. That snapshot is from 3 October 2026 and it stays here as a record of how things stood then; what we know as of 10 October 2026 is at the top of this page.

What the Cup rules do pin down

Even if the race publishes nothing, the Cup regulations apply and they are there as a PDF. Categories go by «la edad cumplida a 31 de diciembre de 2026» (the age reached on 31 December 2026): infantil 12-14, cadete 15-16, juvenil 17-18, junior 19-20, promesa 21-23, sénior 24-39, veterano A 40-49, veterano B 50-59 and veterano C from 60 up, in men’s and women’s categories. To collect a bib «es imprescindible presentar el DNI, Pasaporte o NIE» (ID card, passport or NIE required). If you do not race, there is no refund: «la organización no devolverá en ningún caso el importe de la cuota de inscripción». And for the Cup’s overall standings you have to run at least three races, the best four count, the winner of each race takes 120 points, the second 100 and the third 90, and the final prize is 150, 100 and 50 EUR plus 100 EUR for the best local resident.

Planning notes

El Cuchillo is ten minutes from Tinajo village and half an hour from Arrecife, and the parking is street parking: it is worth arriving with time to spare because the finish is set up in the village centre.

If you are chasing points in the Cup, the one left this year is the Night Run at Club La Santa. The calendar in the rules closes it like this: «Club La Santa Night Run | 4 km | 21 de Noviembre | La Santa». And if you are coming from abroad in September, the Tinajo You Trail is the big race of the same municipality.