The 2027 TCS London Marathon will accept 100,000 runners across two days, organisers confirmed Friday morning. It’s the biggest field the race has ever had. It’s also nowhere near enough. A record 1.33 million people entered the 2027 ballot.
What that means in practice: most applicants aren’t getting drawn. London Marathon Events hasn’t published the official 2027 split of places by route yet, but going by recent years, the ballot accounts for roughly 36,000 to 40,000 of the 100,000 total. The other 60,000-odd places are spread across charity bibs, qualifying time entries, club allocations and a handful of community routes. If the ballot doesn’t land, those are the doors left to push on.
Your ballot odds in 2027
The Double changes the maths without changing how you apply. Everyone already entered in the 2027 ballot is automatically considered for both the Saturday and Sunday draws. You don’t reapply. You don’t pick your day. Allocation is fully random, and if you get drawn for one day, you can’t run the other.
The Guardian has previously reported that London holds back around 18,000 to 20,000 places for the ballot in a normal year. Double that for the two race days and you’re looking at roughly 36,000 to 40,000 ballot bibs in play for 2027. Runner’s World UK has crunched the numbers and landed on odds of around 7.47%, or one in 13. Better than the roughly 1-in-25 odds runners were staring at going into 2026, but still not numbers you’d want to bet a training block on.
For UK residents who paid the extra £49.99 at application to double their entry, the odds work out at closer to 1 in 7, or about 15%. Worth keeping in mind if you’re either kicking yourself for skipping the option, or feeling smug for taking it.
Ballot results land in early July. The 2027 ballot is not reopening, even with the bigger field. If you missed the original April deadline, the routes below are what’s left.
Other ways to get into the 2027 London Marathon
Good For Age
If you can run a fast marathon, this is the most reliable route in for UK residents. London Marathon Events caps Good For Age at around 6,000 places a year, split evenly into 3,000 men and 3,000 women. The qualifying times have been getting tighter, not easier.
For the 2026 race, men aged 18 to 39 needed to break 2:52 and women in the same band needed sub-3:38. Standards get more generous as you age up. The 2026 times were cut by three minutes for men and two minutes for women compared to 2025, so the direction of travel is pretty obvious. The 2027 standards haven’t dropped yet, but don’t bank on them loosening.
Your qualifying time has to come from a UKA, AIMS or nationally certified course inside the published qualifying window, and hitting the time doesn’t guarantee you a bib. If the cap is hit, places go fastest first. Plenty of runners who clear the standard miss the cut by a handful of seconds.
Championship entry
Championship is the tier above Good For Age. Same idea, faster standards, smaller field. You need to be a member of a UK Athletics-affiliated club and have run inside the Championship qualifying times. Under London’s most recently published standards, that’s sub-2:45 for men and sub-3:00 for women. Worth double-checking the official entry page before targeting these in training, because the figures can shift cycle to cycle.
The cap is small. London allocated 1,200 places, split evenly between men and women, for the 2026 race. Same fastest-first rule applies if applications go over the cap. The payoff is a dedicated start pen right behind the elite field, which is about as close to a sub-elite experience as an amateur runner can get at any Major.
Charity places
This is the biggest non-ballot route, and the one most runners end up taking. Hundreds of charities hold London Marathon places every year through the long-running Golden Bond and Silver Bond schemes, and the bond programme expanded again for 2026, opening up new allocations for 800 additional charities.
The catch is the fundraising. Most charities ask for a minimum sponsorship commitment somewhere between £2,000 and £4,000, plus a deposit of around £100. Bigger national charities tend to set the higher targets. Smaller community ones can be more flexible.
It’s not a casual route. Hitting a £3,000 fundraising target while training for a marathon is a project in itself. But if the ballot doesn’t land and you’re not chasing a qualifying time, this is the most achievable way in for a committed runner willing to do the fundraising work.
UK Athletics club places
UKA-affiliated running clubs get a small bib allocation from London every year. Each club decides internally how to distribute its places. Most use a local ballot, an attendance points system, or some combination tied to how often you race in club colours.
It’s not a fast route. Joining a club purely to chase a London bib won’t pay off in your first year. But committed club runners usually pick up a place within two or three years, and the broader benefits of being part of a club, things like training partners, coached sessions and entries to other races, make it worth doing on its own merits.
International tour operators
If you live outside the UK, your route in goes through London’s official International Tour Operators. These approved partners bundle a guaranteed race entry with travel, accommodation and on-the-ground logistics for race weekend. Other World Marathon Majors use similar tour operator routes for international runners.
It’s the most reliable way in for non-UK runners. Places are allocated to the operators directly, not through a lottery. It’s also the most expensive. Entry-only is typically four figures. Add flights and accommodation and you’re looking at a serious trip budget.
Borough, school and community places (new for the Double)
The two-day format has created a small set of guaranteed entries that didn’t exist before, and they’re worth knowing about even if they apply to a narrow slice of runners.
Every school in London will get two guaranteed entries set aside for teachers or staff. Every London borough along the route will get extra entries earmarked for local charities and grassroots community groups. These are limited and targeted, but if you work at a London school or volunteer with a community group along the course, your organisation almost certainly has a place to allocate. Worth asking.
So how do you actually get in?
Hugh Brasher, chief executive of London Marathon Events, framed the Double as a way to widen access to the race.
“By expanding to 100,000 runners across two days, we’re opening the door for more people, more charities and more communities to take part in the world’s greatest marathon,” Brasher said.
For most of us, that door still takes patience to walk through. Getting into London at this point is a multi-year stacking exercise. Enter the ballot every year. Train toward a Good For Age qualifier on the side. Pick a charity you’d genuinely fundraise for and start the conversation now. Join a UKA-affiliated club if you’re not already in one. The runners who actually get in tend to be the ones with two or three of those routes running in parallel.
The Double opened more places. It didn’t make the doors much wider.
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