Record number of people enter London Marathon 2027 ballot after historic 2026 edition

The 2026 marathon had a record 59,830 finishers (AP)

A record number of people have applied to run the London Marathon in 2027 by entering the public ballot.

1,338,544 people have entered the ballot for next year’s race, breaking last year’s record of 1,133,813. More than a million of those came from the UK alone, another record, with similar numbers of male and female applications.

A total of 59,830 runners finished the 2026 edition, setting a new record, while it also broke its own record as the biggest annual one-day fundraising event across the globe, raising over £87.5m for charity - £200,000 more and counting than the 2025 event.

London Marathon Events chief executive Hugh Brasher said: “This astonishing total of applicants firmly establishes London as the world’s most sought-after marathon.

“Nothing else comes close. Our mission is to inspire people of every age and ability to get active - and these extraordinary numbers show the massive draw and power of the London Marathon.”

Places at the race are allocated through a random draw, with the results of the record-breaking ballot to be announced in July.

The 2026 edition saw Kenya’s Sabastian Sawe crush the two-hour barrier to set a new world record of 1:59:30, with all three of the men’s podium finishers under the previous benchmark at a legal marathon. In the women’s race Ethiopian Tigst Assefa defended her title, breaking her own women’s-only world record in the process.

Brasher told BBC Breakfast: “It’s amazing that people want to do it. There are so many reasons to do it, in terms of that joy, that unity, it truly is a day that you feel on top of the world because people are clapping you, cheering you, and in life we don’t get that. People are coming together and you start seeing that as human beings we are far more similar than we are different.”

Runners crossing Tower Bridge during the 2026 TCS London Marathon (Jonathan Brady/PA) (PA Wire)

He admitted: “We’re going to disappoint more than a million people, basically more than 1.3 million people because we can’t fit everyone into the streets of London. There are other marathons you can do, there’s plenty of marathons, but it is just such a unique day, and the crowds and the historic course, it’s just such a special occasion.”

Discussions are underway over the possibility of holding a two-day London Marathon in 2027, rather than only on the traditional Sunday, allowing significantly higher numbers of people to take part.

Brasher said he hoped for a final decision at the end of May.

He continued: “This is for one year only. We are engaging, and have been engaging for a long time, with a lot of stakeholders. Rightly, they want us to go through a process to ensure what we do is appropriate. People will get disrupted - it's never happened before on a Saturday.

“It would be a one-off. We hope to get there, we're not there yet. I'm positive it's the right thing to do.”