Next year\u2019s London Marathon will be held over two days, Saturday 24th and Sunday 25th April, the organisers have confirmed.<\/p>\n
Over 100,000 participants are expected to take part in the one-off event, which sees the full 26.2 mile distance raced on both days.<\/p>\n
London Marathon Events (LME) CEO Hugh Brasher called it \u201cour most ambitious evolution to date\u201d in a press release, terming the event a \u201conce-in-a-generation reimagining of what a marathon and city-wide celebration of activity can be\u201d.<\/p>\n
The plan is to split the men\u2019s and women\u2019s races across the weekend. Elite women and wheelchair racers, plus club runners who achieved the necessary qualifying time, will compete on one day and the men\u2019s fields on another \u2014 both days will also include a mass event, with details to follow on the logistics. Participants will only be permitted to compete once over the weekend, with ballot results announced this July.<\/p>\n
The organisers expect \u201cthe largest fundraising moment in UK sport\u201d across the weekend, citing that this year\u2019s competitors have raised over \u00a390million. It is a solution to the rising \u201cextraordinary demand\u201d to compete in the British capital, with world record ballot entry numbers in each of the past two years \u2014 1.33 million applied to race in 2026, a 36 per cent rise on 2025 and close to double the number who entered the 2024 ballot (578,304).<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a booming rise in popularity for a race first staged in 1981, which is now one of seven world marathon majors, along with Tokyo, Boston, Sydney, Berlin, Chicago and New York.<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s London marathon saw a host of incredible performances. Sabastian Sawe became the first athlete to run sub-two hours in record-legal conditions, clocking 1:59:30s<\/a> as runner-up Yomif Kejelcha also broke the iconic barrier (1:59:41s). All three podium athletes in the women\u2019s race broke 2:16, as Tigst Assefa came out on top in a sprint finish to lower the women\u2019s-only world-record by nine seconds \u2014 which incidentally had been hers from London in 2025.<\/p>\n Five of the fastest men\u2019s marathons ever have been run at London, and since 2004 it has held the women\u2019s-only world record \u2014 by Paula Radcliffe until 2024, when Peres Jepchirchir ran 2:16:16s, and then taken by Assefa.<\/p>\n LME say that a \u201cmajor focus of the double will be inspiring and supporting the next generation\u201d. All London schools are to be given two guaranteed entries for teachers or other staff, with additional such places allocated to the five London boroughs which the routes passes through \u2014 Greenwich, Lewisham, Southwark, Tower Hamlets, and the city of Westminster.<\/p>\n \u201cAll additional income generated will be distributed by the London Marathon Foundation to projects that inspire activity for children and young people across London and the UK,\u201d LME added in their press release.<\/p>\n There is really no precedent for this, and as such LME have had to gain permission from stakeholders, plus local councils, emergency services and Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, to stage this event. Plans for this two-day event were first reported by The Guardian late this March<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Next year\u2019s London Marathon will be held over two days, Saturday 24th and Sunday 25th April, the organisers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65882,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[26],"tags":[9961,27,10232],"class_list":["post-65881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-london","tag-global-sports","tag-london","tag-olympics"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116772192053024841","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65881\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}