On December 13, 2026, a group of runners will line up inside a south London IKEA and try to cover 26.2 miles without leaving the building. Their course will weave through showroom aisles, past the tills, and along the warehouse floor. Organizers say it is the first official marathon ever held inside an IKEA store, joining a small club of unusual races that swap finish-line arches for fluorescent lighting.
The race will take place at the IKEA Croydon store and is scheduled to start at 6 p.m., finishing by midnight, according to a Runner’s World UK report on the event. Each lap is around 1.5 kilometers, which works out to roughly 17 loops to make the full marathon distance, similar in spirit to the new loop format the NYC Marathon is moving toward. There is a hard six-hour cutoff, since the Sussex Trail Events listing notes that the store is a working environment and must be cleared by the end of the night.
It is the work of Jay McCardle, race director and co-founder of Sussex Trail Events, a company with a track record of pulling off races in places where races do not usually happen.
“I approached IKEA with the idea. We’ve done several similar things before. We did a multi-storey car park in Worthing in 2017 and Southend in 2026. Seven levels, up and down. We’ve done races on Southend Pier; races in Shepton Mallet Prison.”
Jay McCardle, race director, to Runner’s World UK
For runners who have logged miles in everything from underground mines to looped 24-hour tracks, the IKEA course will feel familiar in one way. As McCardle pointed out to Runner’s World UK, the store has one logistical perk that most courses do not.
“It has the arrows on the floor. I thought, ‘Well, I don’t even need to mark this!'”
The medal comes with instructions
The kit is being designed to match the venue. McCardle said the team is working on a finisher’s T-shirt and a medal that will arrive in pieces, a twist on the usual elaborate finisher hardware runners are used to collecting.
“We’re currently working on the T-shirt and the medal, which I want to be self-assembly and come with instructions.”
Aid stations will lean Swedish. The store’s canteen will be closed during the race, so the organizers are looking at putting meatballs out on course, a twist on traditional marathon fueling strategy. The Sussex Trail Events page also floats lingonberry sandwiches as a possibility.
“They won’t open the canteen but we’re looking at having meatballs at the aid station. If not that, we might give a bag of meatballs to every finisher, but that’s yet to be confirmed.”
Jay McCardle
There is one significant catch for anyone hoping to bring family along. Spectators will not be allowed inside, because the store is still a working environment. Add in the late start time and runners will want to brush up on their nighttime running safety habits before lining up.
“For security reasons, we can’t have supporters in there. It’s sad, but it’s the trade-off of doing an event like this.”
Jay McCardle
How to enter
The field is capped at 100 runners, with 80 of those places going on general sale. Entries are expected to open at 6 p.m. on Friday, June 26, through SIEntries and the Sussex Trail Events website, and Runner’s World reports they are expected to be gone within minutes.
The fee is £80 for affiliated runners and £82 for unaffiliated runners, and the Sussex Trail Events page confirms 16 percent of proceeds will be donated to Shelter, the UK housing and homelessness charity. The event’s Arc permit, which covers race safety standards in the UK, is still pending.
For the 80 runners who get in, it will be a long night under fluorescent lights, with no cheer squad and a course mapped out by the same arrows that have guided millions of shoppers through their kitchen extensions and bookcase decisions. Anyone planning to toe the line might want to start working through a 16-week marathon training plan and revisit their race-day checklist. The reward, fittingly, will be a medal they have to put together themselves.
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