The London Marathon: From 1981 to the Historic 2027 Double

There are sporting events that grow bigger over time. Then there are those that become part of the identity of a city.

The London Marathon has managed both.

When the first London Marathon took place on 29 March 1981, just over 7,000 runners stood on the start line. The idea had been inspired by another great city marathon thousands of miles away and driven by a belief that London could create something equally special.

More than four decades later, the London Marathon has become one of the most recognisable running events in the world. Elite athletes come to race against the best. Amateur runners can spend years trying to secure a place. Hundreds of thousands line the streets. Huge sums are raised for charity.

And now, London is preparing to do something it has never done before.

In 2027, for one year only, the London Marathon will become a two-day event, with 100,000 people given the opportunity to run from Greenwich to Westminster.

To understand just how extraordinary that number is, it is worth going back to where the story began.

Inspired by New York

The origins of the London Marathon can be traced to 1979 and the New York City Marathon. But London's marathon history began long before the event we know today.

Chris Brasher — Olympic gold medallist and journalist — ran New York and was struck by something beyond the race itself.

This wasn't simply thousands of people running 26.2 miles.

It was a city coming together around them.

Brasher returned to Britain wondering whether London could create the same sense of occasion. Together with fellow Olympian John Disley, he began turning that question into an event.

Their ambitions went beyond organising an elite road race. They wanted ordinary people to run alongside some of the world's best athletes. They wanted people to have fun, experience the satisfaction of achieving something difficult and create an event that showcased London.

Less than two years after Brasher ran through the streets of New York, the first London Marathon was ready.

1981: The First London Marathon

Interest was immediate.

More than 22,000 people applied to take part in the inaugural race, but safety considerations meant only 7,747 could be accepted. On race morning, 7,055 started and 6,255 made it to the finish.

The conditions were hardly glamorous. It was wet, grey and unmistakably British.

But the race produced an ending that couldn't have been scripted much better.

American Dick Beardsley and Norway's Inge Simonsen reached the closing stages together. Rather than sprint against one another for victory, they crossed the finish line hand-in-hand in 2:11:48.

Britain's Joyce Smith won the women's race in 2:29:57, breaking the British record.

London had its marathon.

And from the very first edition, it already felt like something more than just a race.

A Marathon That Kept Evolving

The scale of the event grew quickly, but some of the most important changes weren't simply about putting more runners on the road.

In 1983, London introduced men's and women's wheelchair races. Gordon Perry and Denise Smith became the first winners.

Wheelchair racing would eventually become an integral part of the London Marathon, producing some of the event's most successful athletes. Britain's David Weir has won the men's wheelchair race eight times, while Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson won the women's race six times.

In 2024, London went further, becoming the first marathon to offer exactly the same prize money to its wheelchair and non-disabled elite athletes.

That progression — from introducing wheelchair racing in 1983 to prize-money parity four decades later — says something important about an event that has never simply stood still.

Where Records Are Broken

London also established itself as one of the great stages of elite marathon running.

World records have fallen on its streets.

Grete Waitz broke the women's world record in London in 1983. Ingrid Kristiansen lowered it again in 1985. Khalid Khannouchi set a men's world record in 2002.

Then came Paula Radcliffe.

Her extraordinary 2:15:25 performance in 2003 became one of the defining runs in marathon history and remains the London mixed-race women's course record.

The names and records have changed over the decades, but the principle hasn't.

London isn't simply a mass-participation event with an elite race attached to the front.

It is one of the places where the world's best come to race each other.

That status was formally reinforced in 2006 when London joined Boston, Berlin, Chicago and New York as one of the five founding races of the World Marathon Majors.

What began as a new British marathon in 1981 had become part of the top tier of global marathon running.

More Than a Finishing Time

Yet concentrating only on the fastest runners misses much of what makes the London Marathon what it is.

For tens of thousands of people each year, the significance of running London has very little to do with winning.

Some are chasing a personal best. Some are attempting their first marathon. Others are running in memory of someone, celebrating recovery, fulfilling a promise or raising money for a cause that matters deeply to them.

Charity was part of the thinking behind the event from the beginning. The organisation created by Brasher and Disley would use surplus generated by the event to support projects encouraging sport and physical activity.

Fundraising by the runners themselves grew on an entirely different scale.

By 2025, London Marathon participants had raised around £1.4 billion for charitable causes since the first race.

The stopwatch matters.

But for many of the people standing on the start line, it has never been the only thing that matters.

One Million Finishers — and Still Growing

Another landmark arrived in 2016.

Shannon Foudy crossed the finish line after 5 hours, 45 minutes and 18 seconds. She was running her first marathon and raising money for the neonatal intensive care unit that had cared for her daughter after she was born prematurely.

She was also the one-millionth finisher in London Marathon history.

There was something rather fitting about it.

The millionth person to finish London wasn't an Olympic champion or a world-record holder. She was an everyday runner with a personal reason for taking on 26.2 miles.

By then, the London Marathon had become exactly the combination of elite sport and mass participation that Brasher and Disley had imagined.

When London Couldn't Run as Normal

There has been a London Marathon every year since 1981, but maintaining that record required an extraordinary change in 2020.

The Covid-19 pandemic made the traditional mass-participation event impossible.

Instead of cancelling the race completely, the elite competition was moved from April to October and held on a closed course around St James's Park. The mass race through London couldn't take place, while runners around the world were offered the opportunity to complete a virtual marathon.

It looked nothing like the London Marathon people knew.

Perhaps that was the point.

For one year, the crowds, the costumes and that enormous stream of runners through the capital disappeared.

It demonstrated just how much of London's identity had become tied not merely to the elite competition, but to the thousands of ordinary runners and spectators who turn a marathon into an event that takes over a city.

When mass participation returned, the appetite for London certainly hadn't disappeared.

Quite the opposite.

Becoming the Biggest Marathon in the World

In 2025, 56,640 people completed the London Marathon, setting a Guinness World Record for the largest number of finishers in a marathon.

A year later, London broke its own record.

On 26 April 2026, 59,830 runners finished.

Those are extraordinary numbers.

But perhaps the number that best explains what happened next never appeared on a finish-line clock.

For the 2027 London Marathon, 1,338,544 people entered the ballot.

More than 1.3 million people wanted the opportunity to run 26.2 miles through London.

Even becoming the biggest marathon in the world wasn't enough to come remotely close to satisfying the demand.

And that created the conditions for the next chapter.

2027: Two Days, One London Marathon

On 19 June 2026, London Marathon Events announced the biggest change to the event in its history.

For one year only, the 2027 TCS London Marathon will take place across two days.

On Saturday 24 and Sunday 25 April, a combined 100,000 participants will run the same marathon course from Greenwich to Westminster.

It isn't two different races using the London Marathon name.

It is one event spread across an entire weekend.

The expansion also creates the opportunity for something else London has become synonymous with. Organisers believe the Double could raise more than £150 million for good causes.

For an event that started with 7,055 runners setting off from Blackheath on a wet March morning in 1981, the scale is difficult to comprehend.

From 7,055 Starters to 100,000 Runners

There is a temptation when looking at the history of the London Marathon to measure its success purely in numbers.

The numbers are certainly impressive.

But numbers alone don't explain why more than 1.3 million people wanted a place in 2027.

Perhaps part of the answer still lies in what Chris Brasher experienced in New York in 1979.

A marathon can be a race between some of the finest athletes in the world. It can also be somebody's first attempt at running 26.2 miles. It can be a personal challenge, a fundraiser, a celebration, a memorial or simply something that once seemed impossible.

Put all of those people onto the same streets, heading towards the same finish line, and a marathon becomes something more than a race.

That was the idea behind London in 1981.

Forty-six years later, the Double will show just how far that idea has travelled.

And for one weekend in April 2027, one day simply won't be enough.