Osu’s 28th February Road will once again become the epicentre of cycling on Sunday, 9 August 2026, when the Duku Festival Cycling Championship returns for its third edition.
Riders will set off from the same forecourt that has hosted the event since its debut, but this year’s course has been redrawn to send competitors further afield, extending the men’s distance to 120 kilometres and setting the women’s race at 50 kilometres.
The route sends the peloton east along 28th February Road and La Road to a turning point at Access Bank’s Osu branch, Watson House, before doubling back through the start line toward Independence Square.
From there, cyclists head down Supreme Court Road to a second turning point at the High Court traffic light, retracing the loop for the required distance. Marshals are expected to be stationed at each of the designated turning points to guide outbound and return traffic along the course, which is signposted in the official race map as a there-and-back circuit rather than a single closed loop.
Organiser
Thomas Amoako Boafo, with Ghana Cycling Federation support
A Homowo Fixture Building Momentum
The championship was conceived as part of the wider Duku Festival, a programme of sporting and cultural activities organised in Osu to mark the annual Homowo celebrations.
Since its introduction, the event has grown from a community showcase into a competitive draw for club cyclists, with the second edition in August last year attracting more than eighty riders from Ghana, Nigeria etc over a 100-kilometre, thirty-lap course centred on the same Osu forecourt.
That edition produced a tight finish, with Royal Stars Cycling Club’s Emmanuel Sesi, the reigning SWAG Cyclist of the Year at the time, edging out The Boss Tribe’s Frank David Akuffo Awuku in a photo finish, with Solomon Tagoe finishing third.
What began as a Homowo sideline has become a fixture on Accra’s racing calendar, drawing club riders from beyond Ghana’s borders.
Organisers have steadily broadened the event’s scope beyond the elite road race. In January 2025, the Ghana Cycling Federation partnered with the festival to stage a dedicated para-cycling prelude at the same Osu Castle filling station, featuring tandem, hand-cycling and amputee categories designed to give physically challenged athletes a competitive platform.
The initiative reflected organisers’ stated aim of ensuring cycling in Osu was not confined to able-bodied club riders alone.
The decision to lengthen this year’s men’s route by twenty kilometres, while introducing a standalone women’s distance, points to a championship still refining its format each season.