Fair Luck Challenge 26
The game behind the Ride
SUCH 2026 — The Edition As It Was Announced
Kept here as it stood on the day the dice were still in the air.
Switzerland's most demanding ultracycling challenge.
The route is yours to forge.
Will fortune favor the bold?
The Challenge
Unsupported
No outside help. No shortcuts. Just you, your bike, and roughly 1,000 kilometers of Swiss roads, climbs, fatigue, and self-made decisions. Everything you need must be carried, found, or earned along the way.
Free Route
There is no predefined path. Except the ones imposed by the Challenge. You decide how to connect the dots, where to ride, and how much you dare to risk. This year, luck will decide what you truly deserve. Every choice counts. Every shortcut has consequences.
Fair Luck
This year, chance enters the game. Along the route, mandatory CheckPoints will shape your journey. This is where luck will quietly do its work. How, when, and to what extent will be revealed later. For now, just know this: you will need it.
The Stakes
Start
Wednesday, September 2nd, 10:10 AM. Start from ANY Swiss train station. You choose where it begins. That first decision already matters.
Finish
Bundesplatz, Bern. By tradition, this is where the journey ends. The finish line stands in the heart of the capital, on the Bundesplatz. Sunday morning, 11:00 AM is the final deadline. Cross the line in time, or the challenge remains unfinished.
Finisher Brunch
Sunday, September 6th, 11:00 AM. The highlight of our community. The moment where everyone finally meets again. Food, stories, tired faces, a short and relaxed speech, and the best local and artisanal products. Craft food. Craft beers. Not to be missed.
The Jokers Have Been Dealt
- Joker #1: "The Canton Joker" Four cantons are no longer mandatory: GE, SH, TI, UR. You may skip them. Or not. The choice is yours. Choose carefully.
- Joker #2: "The Half-Canton Joker" For each of our three pairs of half-cantons (Basel, Unterwald, Appenzell), you must pick only ONE. One canton per duo. No second chances. Strategy matters.
- Joker #3: "The Fair Luck Joker" Once during the Challenge, you may overturn Chance and switch to the alternative segment. One move only. Timing decides everything.
The game is on. Will you play it safe, or go all in?
The Essence of THIS Year's Challenge
2026 isn't about simply reaching Bern. It's about how you get there… and how much control you're willing to surrender on the way.
Your mission looks simple on paper:
- Visit 5 Entry Points scattered across Switzerland
- From each EP, ride 5 mandatory segments assigned by Chance
- Connect each destination of the mandatory segment to the next EP in a pure free-route style
- Let the Jokers help you to strategically plan your route through the mandatory cantons.
- Finish on Bundesplatz, on time!
Reality, of course, will be far less simple. And that's exactly the point.
The 5 Entry Points – Where Luck Calls the Shots
Each Entry Point catapults you onto a fixed mandatory route that leads you into a specific Swiss region.
At every Entry Point, you will draw one of two predefined routes:
- A little shorter one spiked with elevation
- A little longer one with calmer gradients
Luck decides. You follow whatever the draw delivers. Until the end of the mandatory segment, your fate is sealed.
After Each Mandatory Segment: Freedom… For Now
Once an EP has spat you out on the far side of Switzerland: freedom returns.
No predefined path. No imposed detours. You choose your line, your climbs, your rhythm.
Your only objective: navigate across Switzerland to reach your next EP, while keeping your long-term goals intact:
- plan your canton strategy
- think ahead
- manage distance vs elevation
- anticipate the next forced segment
- pray Luck doesn't ruin everything (it will)
Your route is free. Your destiny… significantly less.
The Cantons-Jokers – Where Strategy Meets Geography
To complete this Challenge, you must validate all the mandatory cantons, while taking the following rules into account:
A. Canton-Joker: four cantons are optional this year:
GE, SH, UR, TI : Skip them if you want. (If you ride them anyway, please enjoy them on our behalf.)
B. Half-Canton Joker: one per pair is enough
For each pair of half-cantons, crossing just one is enough to validate the group:
- Obwalden or Nidwalden
- Appenzell Innerrhoden or Appenzell Ausserrhoden
- Basel-Stadt or Basel-Landschaft
One per pair — that's the minimum. Want to ride both? Nothing's stopping you.
C. The Real Task
Integrate all canton visits while juggling:
- the 5 EP
- the 5 mandatory fate-routes
- the free-route segments between each
- your energy
- your optimism
- and your occasionally questionable decision-making
This is the strategic heart of SUCH.
The Fair Luck Joker
Once during the entire Challenge, you may use your single Fair Luck Joker. This magical token lets you override the route assigned by Chance at any one Entry Point.
Use it, and you switch to the alternative segment. No redraws. No refunds. No second joker.
Save it… or burn it at the perfect moment. Good riders calculate. Great riders gamble.
Chance Needed A Dealer.
Announcing that luck would choose your segments was the easy part. Making luck actually choose them — at five Entry Points, for every rider at once, on a phone, sometimes without a signal — took most of the year. So we built the casino.
The Starter Box
One small cloth bag, handed over with your Starter Box. Inside: a wooden die and one Joker token. Without them, no draw. The two most important objects of the Challenge weighed almost nothing.
The Die
Six faces, one throw. At each Entry Point you scanned the EP’s code, rolled your die, then scanned the face it landed on. No app can fake a die landing on a table — which is exactly why it was there.
The Fair Luck App
No store, no download. It lived at such.bike/luck; you activated it once with your cap number and your registration email, and from then on it ran on your phone like a real app, offline included. Three languages, one scanner, one job.
The Joker
One token, one use, the whole Challenge. Right after your segment appeared and before you accepted it, you could tap Use my Joker, scan the token, and switch to the other route. Once. Then the button was gone — and in PAIR and RELAY, only the rider who had rolled could spend it.
Two segments existed at each Entry Point: one a little shorter and steeper, one a little longer and kinder. Chance picked one. The app opened the map and the GPX, and closed the other one for good. No re-roll, no negotiation — and when the signal failed, your draw stayed on the phone and travelled on its own as soon as the network came back.
Five Entry Points. One die. One Joker. No complaints accepted by the casino management.
The Final Destination – Bern Awaits
Whatever chaos, beauty, exhaustion, luck and misfortune you gather across Switzerland, everything ends in Bern— on or near the Place Fédérale, beneath the Parliament, under the last watchful eyes of the Challenge.
Reach it, and the game is yours. Fail, and the game wins instead.
The rules of the game — always grab the latest version.
Five Entry Points, one Joker, twenty-six cantons, and Luck in the driver's seat.
Welcome to SUCH26. Let's see how you deal with chaos.