The London Marathon is the hardest mass-participation race in the world to get into, and the reason is simple arithmetic: 1.33 million people entered the ballot for the 2026 race. Almost everyone who runs it got in through a route other than luck.
This guide covers all five of them, what each actually costs, and the thing that changes in 2027.
What changes in 2027
2027 brings the first-ever two-day TCS London Marathon Double: Saturday 24 and Sunday 25 April 2027, with roughly 100,000 runners combined across both days on the same Greenwich-to-The Mall route.
The practical points for anyone trying to get in: you run one day in person, with the other completable virtually through London Marathon MyWay, and the total number of places is far larger than it has ever been. More places does not make the ballot easy — 100,000 against 1.33 million applicants is still long odds — but it is the single biggest expansion in the event's history.
Route 1: the public ballot
Free to enter, open to anyone 18 or over on event day, and the route most people try first.
- For the 2027 race the ballot opened in April 2026 and closed on 1 May 2026, with results announced in early July. The window is short and it does not move for you — diarise it a year ahead.
- If you are selected, standard entry was £79.99. There is also a 'Double Your Chances' option at £49.99 where you donate your entry fee upfront in exchange for a second shot at the ballot.
- International entry is £275, including a carbon offset fee.
- Unsuccessful applicants receive a free premium hydration vest as a consolation — a genuinely well-liked touch, and for many people the only thing they get out of the ballot for several years running.
- Prices were checked in August 2026. Always confirm current pricing on the official site.
Plan as though you will not get in
Because you probably will not. Enter the ballot, then enter a marathon you can definitely get a place in, and treat ballot success as a happy problem to solve later. Every autumn, a lot of people wait on a result and start their training block six weeks late as a consequence.
Route 2: a charity place
The main realistic alternative, and the route most non-ballot runners take. London is the world's largest annual one-day fundraising event, and charity places are central to how it works: hundreds of UK charities receive allocations through their own ballot with London Marathon Events, and then allocate those places to fundraisers.
There is no single universal minimum. Each charity sets its own registration fee and fundraising target, and they vary widely. As a reference point from the race data on this site, a Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity place carried a £120 registration fee and a £2,500 fundraising minimum.
- 1 Apply early. Charity places for a spring marathon are typically advertised and allocated from the previous summer and autumn.
- 2 Apply to several charities rather than one. Popular charities are heavily oversubscribed and run their own selection.
- 3 Read the commitment properly before accepting. A £2,500 minimum is a contractual undertaking, not an aspiration, and some charities ask you to cover any shortfall.
- 4 Smaller and local charities are frequently easier to get a place with, and often set lower minimums.
- 5 Check whether the registration fee is refundable and what happens if you get injured.
Ballot places carry no fundraising requirement
This trips people up constantly. If you get in through the ballot you can fundraise as much or as little as you like, including nothing at all. The mandatory minimum attaches to the charity place, not to the race.
Hitting a target of that size takes a plan rather than good intentions, and there is a separate guide on how to do it without exhausting everyone you know.
Route 3: Good For Age
If you have run a fast enough marathon inside the qualifying window, Good For Age gives you a route in that depends on neither luck nor fundraising. The standards are set by age group and sex, and these are the ones London published for the 2026 race.
| Age on race day | Women | Men |
|---|---|---|
| 18-39 | sub 3:38 | sub 2:52 |
| 40-44 | sub 3:43 | sub 2:57 |
| 45-49 | sub 3:46 | sub 3:02 |
| 50-54 | sub 3:53 | sub 3:07 |
| 55-59 | sub 3:58 | sub 3:12 |
| 60-64 | sub 4:23 | sub 3:34 |
| 65-69 | sub 4:53 | sub 3:52 |
| 70-74 | sub 5:53 | sub 4:52 |
| 75-79 | sub 6:13 | sub 5:07 |
| 80-84 | sub 6:38 | sub 5:27 |
| 85-89 | sub 7:10 | sub 6:10 |
| 90+ | sub 7:45 | sub 7:20 |
Check the year before you rely on this
These are the standards London published for the 2026 race, with a qualifying window of 1 October 2024 to 30 September 2025. At the time of writing the organiser had not yet published the 2027 detail, saying only that it would follow in the autumn — and the qualifying window moves each year. Confirm both the standard and the window on the official site before planning a season around them.
Four things about Good For Age catch people out, and none of them is the time itself.
- 1 Hitting the standard does not get you a place. It gets you the right to apply. Places were capped at 6,000 for 2026 — 3,000 men and 3,000 women — and allocation is fastest-first relative to age and qualifying time within each category.
- 2 That means the effective standard is usually quicker than the published one. In an oversubscribed category, the published time is a floor rather than a threshold, and how far inside it you need to be varies year to year.
- 3 Only UK residents are eligible to apply.
- 4 The qualifying window is a fixed period, typically running from October to the following September, roughly eighteen months before the race. A brilliant marathon run a month before the window opened does not count.
Route 4: Championship entry
For fast club runners, with its own start and a considerably quicker standard than Good For Age. Unlike GFA, you can qualify on a half marathon as well as a marathon.
| Distance | Women | Men |
|---|---|---|
| Marathon | sub 3:10:00 | sub 2:38:00 |
| Half marathon | sub 1:26:00 | sub 1:11:30 |
- You must be a registered member of a UK athletics body — England Athletics, scottishathletics, Welsh Athletics or Athletics Northern Ireland.
- The qualifying time must have been run on a course certified by UK Athletics, AIMS, or your national governing body. A fast time on an unmeasured course does not count.
- Places were capped at 1,200 for 2026 — 600 men and 600 women — and, as with GFA, selection is fastest-first if applications exceed the cap.
- The qualifying window for 2026 ran from 1 October 2024 to 30 September 2025, the same period as Good For Age.
- If you apply for a Championship place and are not selected, UK residents who have previously completed a marathon may be offered a Good For Age place instead. Applying for Championship is therefore not a wasted move.
To put the standards in context: the Championship women's marathon standard of 3:10 is quicker than the 18-39 Good For Age standard of 3:38 by twenty-eight minutes, and the men's 2:38 is fourteen minutes inside the 2:52. These are club-level competitive times rather than very good club-runner times.
Route 5: club places
UK Athletics-affiliated clubs receive a small allocation of places, usually distributed by internal ballot among members. The numbers are small and the internal competition can be fierce, but it is a real route and it is one of the more overlooked ones.
It also has a longer-term logic to it. Joining a club improves your training, gives you people to run with, and puts you in a ballot you were not previously in — and unlike the public ballot, the odds in a club ballot are a few dozen to one rather than a hundred to one.
The five routes compared
| Route | What it costs | What it requires | Realistic odds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Public ballot | £79.99 if selected (£49.99 via Double Your Chances) | Being 18+ and applying in the window | Very long — 1.33m applicants for 2026 |
| Charity place | Registration fee plus a fundraising minimum, up to £2,500 | A serious fundraising commitment | Good, especially with smaller charities |
| Good For Age | Standard entry fee | A qualifying marathon time inside the window, and UK residency | Good, but not certain — 6,000 places allocated fastest-first |
| Championship | Standard entry fee | Sub-2:38 / sub 3:10 marathon or sub 1:11:30 / sub 1:26 half, plus UK club membership | 1,200 places, fastest-first. Non-selected applicants may be offered GFA |
| Club place | Standard entry fee plus club membership | Club membership, and winning an internal ballot | Modest but far better than the public ballot |
If you get in
Some practical facts worth having early, because they affect how you train and plan.
- The course starts at Greenwich Park and Blackheath, across three separate start areas that merge around mile three, and finishes on The Mall in front of Buckingham Palace.
- It is one of the flattest and fastest marathon courses in the world, with independent analyses putting total elevation change at around 419ft and the course net downhill. The only real rises are Tower Bridge at around halfway and a short one near Blackfriars around miles 23-24.
- The cut-off is eight hours from when the last starter crosses the line. The main finish closes around 5:30pm, with runners still out finishing at a secondary point supported by Tailwalkers.
- You must be 18 or over on event day.
While you wait
Most people who eventually run London spend a few years not running London, and the useful thing to do with those years is run other marathons. Manchester, Brighton, Chester, Edinburgh and Yorkshire are all excellent races that you can actually enter, and arriving at London having already run two marathons is a much better experience than arriving having run none.
It is also worth putting the goal somewhere it persists. A ballot entry that fails is easy to forget about until the window closes again; a stated goal with a date on it is harder to lose track of, which is most of what a Verus profile is for.