(Above) Area where the race will start, from the Dearborn Street Bridge at left to the State Street Bridge at right, then back to Lake Street and finishing at Clark Street. (Click on images to view larger versions.)

By Steven Dahlman

Aug. 10, 2025 – It has taken a circuitous journey since it was first announced nine years ago, but the Chicago River Swim, according to organizers of the event, will happen on September 21 on the main branch of the river.

Five hundred swimmers will follow a course from the Dearborn Street Bridge east to State Street, west to Lake Street, and then east back to Clark Street. It will be the first open water swim on the Chicago River since the 1920s. (Left) View from Wolf Point West looking east along main branch of Chicago River. Swimmers will race along much of the distance seen here, plus a shorter distance to Lake Street, and then back almost to the start.

The swimming race was originally planned – in 2016 – for the south branch of the Chicago River, but that event did not happen, nor did a race that was announced in 2019. In April 2024, organizers said the Chicago River Swim would take place that September but, citing safety concerns, the City of Chicago denied a permit for the event and persuaded organizers to move the event to Lake Michigan.

Starting from Ohio Street Beach, 500 experienced open-water swimmers navigated a two-mile course through Lake Michigan on September 22, 2024. The swimmers were selected from 1,160 applicants from 12 countries and 39 U.S. states. They included Olympic swimmers and Chicago Triathlon participants.

The event has the support of Friends of the Chicago River.

“This milestone event marks a powerful symbol of how far we have come in revitalizing the Chicago-Calumet River system which was once disregarded as a part of the sewer system and a second-class citizen as compared to [Lake Michigan] – a condition that is no longer true,” wrote the 41,000-member nonprofit organization in its August 9 newsletter. “Friends has been a proponent...of the Chicago River Swim since its organizers first approached us with the germ of an idea almost a decade ago.”

Doug McConnell, co-founder of the nonprofit A Long Swim, and himself a marathon swimmer, says the event will raise money for research into ALS, the neurodegenerative disease also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, and to provide swimming lessons to 2,000 children in underserved Chicago communities. The 2024 event raised $150,000 for ALS research and $50,000 for swimming lessons.

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