Jessie Diggins returns to her roots with Wisconsin’s American Birkebeiner

Jessie Diggins has put another ski race on her calendar, but this time it is not a return to the World Cup. The Olympic champion will compete in Wisconsin’s American Birkebeiner on Saturday, 27 February 2027, bringing one of the sport’s biggest names back to a gathering she has cherished since childhood.

The announcement, made in a social-media video and confirmed by the American Birkebeiner Ski Foundation on 16 October, comes after Diggins ended her international racing career at the World Cup finals in Lake Placid in March. Her entry gives the 53rd Birkie a headline attraction, while offering a different picture of sporting retirement: leaving the international circuit need not mean leaving the start line—or the community that first made racing meaningful.

“I have my next race on the calendar, and it is none other than the American Birkebeiner,” Diggins said. “Growing up in Minnesota…the Birkie weekend was essentially a national holiday. And if you are a cross-country skier anywhere in North America, you get it.”

A homecoming rather than a World Cup comeback

For Diggins, who grew up in Afton, Minnesota, the trip to northern Wisconsin is a homecoming. Long before her international breakthrough, she raced the Kortelopet, the Birkie’s shorter companion event. She won its freestyle race in 2008 and again in 2009 while still at high school.

Those experiences remain central to how she describes her relationship with the sport.

“It’s where I really learned how to race and how to have fun,” she said in announcing her return.

Her February plans extend beyond her own competition. Diggins will be at the Kortelopet start on Friday, 26 February, encouraging participants before racing the Birkie the following day. A Dermatone Glitter Bar will give skiers the chance to adopt her signature race-day glitter, while a promotional partnership will enter Kortelopet registrants using the code JESSIE27 into a draw for Salomon skis.

The emphasis on the shorter race is deliberate. The organisers and Diggins are highlighting its role as a stepping stone for younger athletes and newer participants—the same function it served in her own development.

She already knows how to win it

Diggins will not arrive simply as a celebrity guest. She won the women’s American Birkebeiner in 2024, taking her first title at the event’s 50th running.

That race was memorable for more than its winners. A severe shortage of snow forced organisers to abandon the traditional point-to-point format and concentrate their resources on a roughly 10-kilometre loop near Cable. The elite freestyle competition covered five laps, with Diggins and France’s Flora Dolci separating themselves from the rest of the women’s field early on.

They remained together for most of the race before Diggins pulled clear on the final lap, winning by 26 seconds. Alayna Sonnesyn finished third.

Speaking afterwards to Nordic Insights, Diggins explained why the result carried a significance beyond another victory.

“I’ve waited a very long time to get to finally ski the full American Birkebeiner and be part of this family tradition and this community of people, and it did not disappoint,” she said. “It was amazing.”

She also praised the work required to stage the race in such difficult conditions, describing the crowds and atmosphere around the repeated laps as a major part of the experience.

Her 2027 return therefore reconnects two parts of her racing life: the junior who learned her craft at the Kortelopet and the established international star who finally won the full Birkie.

What makes the Birkie different

The American Birkebeiner is North America’s largest cross-country ski marathon. Its scheduled 2027 courses run from Cable to Hayward, with a 50-kilometre freestyle race and a separate 53-kilometre classic race. The announcement of Diggins’ participation does not specify which technique she will race.

That distinction matters: several reports have described her entry simply as a 53-kilometre race, but that is the classic distance, not the distance of every Birkie competition. Her 2024 victory came in freestyle.

The event combines elite competition with mass participation. Its starting waves accommodate international-standard racers, first-time entrants and long-serving veterans. Skiers completing 20 or more Birkies earn “Birchlegger” status, while a dedicated Wave 70 recognises older participants. The finish on Hayward’s Main Street gives recreational skiers the same celebrated destination as the leaders.

This shared setting is part of the race’s appeal. In a 2020 account of the event, foundation executive director Ben Popp described the experience succinctly: “Best of all, citizen skiers get the same experience as the elites.”

Diggins’ participation adds star power without changing that basic identity. She will be returning to a race whose traditions place considerable value on turning up year after year, not just finishing first.

From 35 skiers to a Northwoods institution

The Birkie began in 1973, when entrepreneur Tony Wise launched the race as part of his efforts to develop Nordic skiing around his Telemark resort near Cable. Just 35 skiers entered the inaugural long-distance event.

Wise drew inspiration from Norway’s Birkebeinerrennet. Both races commemorate the Birkebeiner warriors who carried the infant Prince Haakon to safety during Norway’s civil war in 1206, a story still represented at the Wisconsin event through costumed skiers using traditional equipment.

Its early infrastructure was considerably less sophisticated than today’s dedicated trails and grooming machinery. Author and longtime participant Jerome Poling told Wisconsin Public Radio that the first races linked logging roads, fire lanes and railroad ditches. For the inaugural event, tracks were made by pulling two people on Alpine skis behind a snowmobile.

The race has since become a major gathering for the region. In the same interview, Poling described more than 10,000 skiers across its races, supported by over 2,000 volunteers and joined by tens of thousands of spectators. Those are festival-wide figures, rather than the size of a single elite competition.

For Hayward and Cable, the annual influx also supports hotels, restaurants and other local businesses. For the wider ski community, it creates a meeting point where junior development, international competition and lifelong recreation occupy the same weekend.

A celebrated tradition still dependent on winter

Diggins’ previous victory also illustrates one of the Birkie’s continuing challenges: securing enough snow to stage an event of this scale.

Organisers reported that nearly 12,000 participants took part in Birkie Week in 2024 despite exceptionally warm conditions, with machine-made snow helping preserve the programme on a shortened trail network. Weather again required adjustments to the festival schedule in February 2026.

The planned Cable-to-Hayward course remains one of the defining attractions of the 2027 race, but the experience of recent winters underlines why the final format depends on conditions as well as preparation.

Back where racing was fun

Birkie Week is scheduled for 24–28 February 2027, with Diggins’ Kortelopet appearance on Friday followed by the main marathon on Saturday.

Her entry should not be read as an announced return to the World Cup or a commitment to a new international marathon career. What has been confirmed is more specific: a return to Wisconsin’s most famous ski race, and time spent supporting the participants following a pathway she once took herself.

For a skier whose career helped redefine American cross-country skiing, that is a fitting next chapter—not another international farewell, but a chance to race among the people who understood why Birkie weekend felt like a national holiday in the first place.