The London Marathon is one of the biggest and best running events in the world, with over 50,000 runners hitting the streets of the UK’s capital and running from Greenwich to The Mall each year.
With so many runners in town London becomes an even busier place, and to ensure your race experiences is enjoyable you need to be on top of logistics regarding where to stay, how to get the London Marathon Expo and start line, and what the start and finish areas are going to be like.
In addition to this, whether you’re chasing a PB or just looking to get round, you’re going to want to know what the London Marathon course is like.
We’ve run the event around 20 times between us, tried pretty much every start zone and had both great days and huge blow-ups on the course. In our complete guide to the London Marathon you’ll get all the info you need to enjoy the event and more. Below you’ll also find our London Marathon podcast where we cover these areas. See you there!
London Marathon Guide
In our London Marathon 2025 podcast Tom, Kieran and Nick discuss all the logistics and other things you need to know about the event.
Where To Stay
The London Marathon start is in Greenwich Park in south-east London, and the London Marathon Expo is at the ExCel exhibition centre in east London, while the race finish is on The Mall in the city centre.
While staying near one of those spots might make logistics a little easier throughout the weekend, as long as you’re staying somewhere within the Transport For London (TfL) zone you’ll be able to get everywhere you need to quickly and fairly cheaply using public transport.
On race morning travel on TfL services is free is you show your race number and if you’re looking to save money staying outside London’s pricy city centre is worth doing, because you’ll still be able to get to the Expo and start line easily enough.
London Marathon Expo Guide
The London Marathon Expo runs from Wednesday 23rd to Saturday 26th April and is held at the ExCel centre in the Docklands area of the capital. The opening times are 10am to 8pm on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, and 8:30am to 5:30pm on Saturday.
You have to go to the Expo to get your race number, and you’ll need a form of ID to pick this up, along with the email sent by the organisers with a QR code. The easiest way to get to the Expo is using the Elizabeth Line on the London Underground or Docklands Light Railway (DLR), getting off at Custom House or Prince Regent station.
As you’d expect, the Expo gets very busy on Saturday, so if you can go earlier in the week it will make the experience a lot easier and more pleasant. You will also take a lot of steps to get to and around the various stalls at the Expo, so it can be a tiring experience – another reason to avoid going on Saturday if possible. That said, the atmosphere at the Expo is at its exciting best on the Saturday.
Where Is The London Marathon Start?
The London Marathon starts in Greenwich Park in Blackheath, and there are different start zones coded by colour – Red, Green and Blue. You will be told your start zone and time in an email in the weeks before the race, and the email will also give a suggested arrival station.
That’s because Greenwich Park is a big place and the starts are spread out to help manage the crowds of runners. Heading to the suggested station – it will be one of Blackheath, Greenwich and Maze Hill – will put you on the easiest path to your start.
It takes a couple of hours to get all the runners across the start line so also look at which starting wave you’re in, which will include a starting time and suggested arrival time.
Whatever wave you’re in it’s worth aiming to get to Greenwich well before your start time so you can walk to the right starting zone and drop off your bag. All the starts are a 10-15 minute walk from their station, and you’ll want to take that walk nice and slowly before running a marathon.
Where Is The London Marathon Finish?
The London Marathon finishes on The Mall in the centre of the city, with runners passing Buckingham Palace in the final few hundred metres of the race after running up Birdcage Walk.
Once you’ve crossed the finish line you walk down The Mall to the baggage trucks to reclaim your stuff, then you can meet friends and family around Horseguards Parade or in St. James Park.
There are letters on signposts around the area that you can agree to meet under to make things easier in the crowds, then your best route to leave is through Trafalgar Square to the north of the London Marathon route itself.
If you’re planning to stay in the area to refuel then the short walk to Covent Garden is a good option, with plenty of restaurants and bars in the area that will be buzzing with post-race atmosphere.
London Marathon Route Guide
There are actually three different London Marathon routes, because the three different starts in Greenwich Park follow a different path in the first 5K of the race, before they all converge in Woolwich as you head towards the river.
The course is flat for the most part, with some notable downhills in the first half and a couple of very short but memorable climbs in the second. In terms of pacing it’s important not to go too fast after the downhills in the first half, especially given the roar of the crowd will be spurring you on.
In the first half of the race you run around Greenwich and Woolwich and along the banks of the Thames to Tower Bridge, with the most notable cheer point being at the Cutty Sark at 10K, where a huge crowd assembles.
The crowds get larger and larger as you approach Tower Bridge as well, and crossing the bridge is the high point of the marathon for many, since it occurs just before halfway when you’re (hopefully) still feeling good and the atmosphere from the crowd is electric.
Once over the bridge you turn right and head to Canary Wharf, and this can be a hard stretch of the race as you start to tire in a relatively quiet and winding part of the course.
At around the 20-mile mark you turn and start heading back towards the city centre again, passing Tower Bridge and hitting a long stretch alongside the Thames before you reach Westminster and turn away from the river and head for the finish.
This final stretch is well supported, but you’ll probably be feeling too rough to really enjoy it. There’s a quiet spot on the course in an underpass near Embankment where you can take a moment to yourself away from the crowds if required.
Once you hit Birdcage Walk you have less than a kilometre to go, but it can feel like it stretches on forever. When you reach the turn by Buckingham Palace you’re basically there though, as the finish line is just around the corner.
How To Get Into The London Marathon 2026
If you’re not running this year but want to in 2026 then you have a few options to try. The first one is the ballot, which allocates around 17,000 places in the race each year.
In 2025 that was from 840,318 applications, a record that seems to get broken every year, so it’s fair to say the odds are not in your favour via the ballot, but it’s certainly worth a go.
You can also run for charity, which typical requires you to raise about £2,000 for the charity of your choice. Getting a charity spot is easier than a ballot place, but there will be a lot of work to do to raise that money.
Faster runners can also get in via a Good For Age (GFA) or Championship Place. You need to run a certain time within the qualifying period for this, and with the GFA places you’ll probably need to be 5-6 minutes faster than the qualifying time, because the spots are allocated on a fastest-first basis, similar to the Boston Marathon.