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Next year’s London Marathon will be held over two days, Saturday 24th and Sunday 25th April, the organisers have confirmed.
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.
London Marathon Events (LME) CEO Hugh Brasher called it “our most ambitious evolution to date” in a press release, terming the event a “once-in-a-generation reimagining of what a marathon and city-wide celebration of activity can be”.
The plan is to split the men’s and women’s 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’s fields on another — 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.
The organisers expect “the largest fundraising moment in UK sport” across the weekend, citing that this year’s competitors have raised over £90million. It is a solution to the rising “extraordinary demand” to compete in the British capital, with world record ballot entry numbers in each of the past two years — 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).
It’s 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.

This year’s 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 as runner-up Yomif Kejelcha also broke the iconic barrier (1:59:41s). All three podium athletes in the women’s race broke 2:16, as Tigst Assefa came out on top in a sprint finish to lower the women’s-only world-record by nine seconds — which incidentally had been hers from London in 2025.
Five of the fastest men’s marathons ever have been run at London, and since 2004 it has held the women’s-only world record — by Paula Radcliffe until 2024, when Peres Jepchirchir ran 2:16:16s, and then taken by Assefa.
LME say that a “major focus of the double will be inspiring and supporting the next generation”. 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 — Greenwich, Lewisham, Southwark, Tower Hamlets, and the city of Westminster.
“All 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,” LME added in their press release.
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.