Josh Kerr is competing in the 3,000 meters at the 2026 World Indoor Championships in Torun, Poland! This is Stuart Weir’s second preview of the World Athletics Indoor Champs for 2026! Thanks, Stuart!
Josh Kerr World Indoors preview
Josh Kerr went into the 2025 World Championships 1500m full of confidence as defending champion and having medalled in the two previous Olympics, but it all went wrong when an injury left him to finish in the final 27 seconds behind the winner.
Kerr won gold in the last world indoors in his native Scotland in the 3000m, the distance he has chosen to contest in Torun this weekend. Talking to the British athletics writers earlier in the week he confessed that the 3K was a distance that intrigued him. “The 3K is a distance that excites me. The 5K is just not a distance that excites me. I think 3K brings in such a great balance of, the great 5K runners and the great milers and throws them all together. Positioning is huge, closing speed is huge. It’s a great race for a little bit more tactics, but it’s not going to be stupid slow -sometimes a 1500 can be stupid slow. I don’t, see a 3K going like that. And so, we’re still going to clip away at it, but positioning. It’s a perfect way to start your season is going after these really intense races. So yeah, I’m really excited. I’m sure it’s going to be an awesome field and I’m ready to go after the top spot”.
In a year with no World outdoors or Olympics, starting his year with an indoor 3K made sense: “I love it as a competition in general And when you’re in a year that does not have a massive amount of global championships, You have got to take your opportunity to go out and prove that you’re the best in the world. The 3K for me is a fun distance. Obviously, I was able to run the two-mile road record a couple of years ago, and I was also able to win world indoors in the 3K a couple of years ago as well. So just trying to get back to that, back to high-level competition after everything that happened last year, makes me just excited to go out there and compete”.
I asked him whether he thought he was better indoors or outdoors: “I would say outdoors, but my NCAA titles would tell you indoors, but it’s just this time of year. It’s how you deal with each thing that comes your way. But I truly think both of them are strengths of mine. I enjoy running indoors. You have to be a little more tactical and savvy. Outdoors is a little bit more about who the better athletes are. I do think, indoors, you can get a little bit exposed with bad positioning. So it’s definitely a fun challenge moving towards the outdoors. I definitely enjoy outdoors a little bit more just because I think the competitions are a little bit bigger. But I think the indoor scene has its place, and it can create some pretty awesome atmospheres in the indoor arenas. Getting a third world title for me would be a really big stepping stone into the season as well with some fun opportunities with World Indoor Championships, Commonwealth Games, Europeans, and things like that”.
He told us that he saw a year with no global championship as an opportunity, not an anticlimax. For a Scottish Athlete running for Scotland in Scotland in the Commonwealth Games is massive in itself. He explained: “I have some pretty big goals. When you have the flexibility of timing on races, when you have the flexibility of no Olympic Games, you can go out and try to prove why you’re the best runner in the world. I think, in those [Olympic] years, there’s one day that you can prove that you’re the best athlete in the world, but I think, this year, over this season, we’re going to see me trying to be the best 1500-meter runner in the world. And that’s not one day, it’s across the whole season. And I think that’s what the fun part of it is. And it’s a fun challenge for everyone to be battling for that top spot. It keeps me excited.
The 3K final is at 7.20pm Polish time on Saturday, 21 March 2026.
