Stirling Gets Its Spring Road Race Back in 2027, at Half the Distance

London Marathon Events (LME) said Tuesday that it will stage a half marathon in Stirling on Sunday, May 16, 2027, giving the Scottish city its first big spring road race since its marathon was called off in 2022.

LME, which runs the London Marathon and is expanding it across two days in 2027, is working with Up and Running Events, a Scottish organizer whose calendar runs from 5K to the half marathon across Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen. Neither company has announced a marathon distance for Stirling, 30 miles northeast of Glasgow and without a marathon since 2019.

The race the city lost began in 2017 under the Great Run Company, which also stages the Great North Run. Great Run added a half marathon in 2018 and pulled out after the 2019 edition, telling BBC News that it had not been able to deliver the ambition it started with and that the event was “unsustainable” in its current format. It dropped the Great Stirling XCountry at the same time, saying that event was “no longer economically viable.” Stirling Council called the decision disappointing.

Classic Run Events took it on for 2020. Covid wiped out that year, an October 2021 date was postponed, and the rescheduled race, set for May 15, 2022, was called off on March 23, seven weeks out. Organizers said entries had been “severely reduced by the global pandemic,” and race director Luke Traynor said “the safety and welfare of our runners is paramount.” The Stirling Observer reported that its requests for further information went unanswered.

The running site runabc reported the cancellation as a shortage of entries and noted that places were still being promoted three days earlier. Entrants were promised full refunds by email on March 25. A week later the money had not arrived, and posts from runners asking about refunds were being removed from the event’s Facebook page.

The marathon had been shrinking before it left Scotland’s calendar. Stirling recorded 1,835 marathon finishers in 2018 and 1,140 in 2019, a fall of 38 percent in a single year.

LME arrived in Scotland by purchase. In November 2024 it bought Caledonian Concepts and Loch Ness Marathon Ltd, taking on the Loch Ness Marathon, Etape Loch Ness and the Inverness Half Marathon, events that drew more than 19,880 participants and raised about £1 million (about $1.4 million) that year. Inverness sold out its 41st edition before the March 8 race this year, with a record 5,100 participants and female entries at 50 percent for the first time. Up and Running started the Glasgow Running Festival this year.

“Together, our ambition is to establish the Stirling Half Marathon as one of the biggest races on the Scottish running calendar and create an event that runners look forward to returning to year after year,” said Up and Running co-founder and brand director Laurence Prior. That is the ground the previous organizer lost, and no field size for 2027 has been announced. LME chief executive Hugh Brasher said the two organizations share a “commitment to inspiring people of all ages and abilities to lead active lives while engaging with the communities that host our events.”

The date puts Stirling two weeks before the Edinburgh Half Marathon on May 30, 2027, and gives LME two fixed points in the Scottish spring, with Inverness in early March. LME’s parent charity is the London Marathon Foundation. It put £500,000 (about $680,000) into the £1.1 million (about $1.5 million) Get Active Scotland fund, announced in September 2025 with public bodies including the national sports agency sportscotland.

Demand across LME’s portfolio is at a record. A total of 1,338,544 people applied for a place in the 2027 London Marathon, up 18 percent on the 1,133,813 who applied for 2026 and more than double the 578,304 who applied for 2024. Entries for the Stirling Half Marathon open later in 2026.