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LONGi is expanding its engagement in European sport. In 2026, LONGi became the Official Solar Technology Partner of FC Bayern München and the Official Solar Partner of the BMW BERLIN-MARATHON. Through both partnerships, LONGi aims to raise awareness of renewable energy among broader audiences and contribute its solar expertise to sustainability efforts in sport.
Sport combines broad public reach with significant physical infrastructure. Football clubs engage millions of people throughout the year, while major running events bring together tens of thousands of participants and spectators. At the same time, stadiums, training facilities and large sporting events consume energy and generate emissions through their operations and associated activities. This makes both energy use and decarbonisation increasingly relevant to the way sport is organised.
For LONGi, this creates a natural connection between its core business and its engagement in sport.
Renewable energy gains importance in sports operations
Large sporting events can have a considerable carbon footprint. Their environmental impact extends well beyond the energy required to operate stadiums and event infrastructure and includes the travel of athletes and spectators, transport and logistics, accommodation, catering, materials and waste. Travel in particular can account for a significant share of event-related emissions. Sports organisations across Europe are putting greater emphasis on measuring and reducing these impacts. World Athletics, the international governing body for athletics, identifies energy provision at events as a significant source of emissions and specifically recommends shifting energy supply away from fossil fuels towards renewable sources. Solar can contribute to these efforts by supplying renewable electricity directly to stadiums, training facilities and other sports infrastructure. Combined with energy storage, it can also increase the share of locally generated renewable electricity used on site.
The role of solar in European football is also gaining attention. UEFA and SolarPower Europe entered into a cooperation in 2025 aimed at supporting football associations and clubs in reducing their carbon footprint through greater use of renewable energy, including solar and energy storage.
“Sport reaches people in a way few other areas of society can. As an integrated provider of solar and storage solutions, we can use that reach to increase understanding of renewable energy and its role in decarbonisation,” said Jia Chao, Head of the European Distributed Business Center. “We want to make solar energy understandable and relevant beyond our own industry and show where it can make a practical contribution.”
FC Bayern München 2026-2028
LONGi has been an Official Partner of FC Bayern München since August 2026. Under the agreement, which runs until 2028, LONGi is also the club's exclusive Official Solar Technology Partner and Official Photovoltaic (PV) Solutions Partner.
Sustainability is an important part of the cooperation. LONGi and FC Bayern München plan to explore how the company's solar expertise can contribute to the club's sustainability activities, particularly where energy use, infrastructure and decarbonisation intersect.
The cooperation also brings the topic of renewable energy to audiences outside the energy sector. Football reaches people across countries, generations and social groups and provides an opportunity to increase awareness of how solar technology can contribute to the transition towards a lower-carbon energy system. LONGi communicates the partnership under the theme “POWER ON, GAME ON”, linking the energy associated with football with the company's work in renewable energy.
BMW BERLIN MARATHON 2026
As Official Solar Partner of the BMW BERLIN-MARATHON 2026, LONGi is supporting one of the world's leading marathon events. Tens of thousands of runners from around the world will take part in Berlin on 27 September.
LONGi's activities around the marathon follow the campaign theme “Power the Limitless” and the question “What powers you?”. The campaign puts the individual motivations of runners at the centre and looks at what enables people to set goals, sustain their effort over time and continue when progress becomes difficult. Employees, runners and members of the wider running community share their own reasons for running and their experiences during preparation. For LONGi, the question also provides a link between the personal understanding of energy and the company's work in renewable energy. The experiences of runners provide a starting point for a broader discussion about energy, where it comes from and how the power of the sun can be converted into clean electricity.
Sustainability is also part of the BMW BERLIN-MARATHON's event management. Since 2024, the event has met the requirements of the Athletics for a Better World Standard established by World Athletics, the international governing body for athletics. In 2026, the BMW BERLIN-MARATHON achieved Gold Level under the standard. The planning of the event has also been certified according to ISO 20121 for sustainable event management, while organiser SCC EVENTS is working to extend the certification to the entire company, including all events and its offices. According to SCC EVENTS, the BMW BERLIN-MARATHON is already powered almost entirely by renewable energy.
More on the partnership with FC Bayern München
More on the partnership with the BMW BERLIN MARATHON 2026
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