With five days to go before the 46th TCS London Marathon, organisers and Transport for London have published the final road closures and transport advisories for Sunday 26 April, and they amount to one of the most extensive single-day shutdowns the capital sees all year. The 26.2-mile route from Blackheath to The Mall cuts through six London boroughs — Greenwich, Lewisham, Southwark, Tower Hamlets, the City of London and Westminster — and the closure corridor will affect bus services, river piers and Tube station access across the entire south-east and central sections of the city.
The earliest closures begin at around 04:00 on the three start-area commons — Blackheath, Greenwich Park perimeter roads and St John's Park in Charlton — where organisers need to build up the Red, Green and Blue start pens overnight. The wider south-east arterial network, including Shooters Hill Road, Charlton Way, Old Dover Road and Vanbrugh Park, is scheduled to close progressively from 07:00 and is not expected to reopen until roughly mid-afternoon once the last of the approximately 55,000 runners has cleared the first 10 kilometres. Spectators travelling to Greenwich, Blackheath or Charlton stations are being urged to arrive before 08:30 to avoid heavy overcrowding at the ticket gates and on the platforms.
The Docklands and central sections carry the longest closure windows. Canary Wharf, the Isle of Dogs loop, Rotherhithe, Wapping and the Tower Hill–Monument corridor close from around 08:30 and remain shut until late afternoon, while the final kilometres along the Embankment, Parliament Square, Birdcage Walk and The Mall — including the roads around Trafalgar Square, Whitehall, Pall Mall East, Cockspur Street and the Strand — will be in closure from 07:30 through to 22:00 on Sunday evening. Residents inside the finish-area perimeter should expect their streets to remain pedestrianised into the night while barriers, grandstands and broadcast compounds are dismantled.
On public transport, TfL has confirmed that more than 80 bus routes will be diverted, curtailed or suspended on Sunday, with the most significant disruption concentrated on south-east London services that cross the start corridor and central London services that terminate at Trafalgar Square or Victoria. The Tube and Elizabeth line will run as normal, but access to Greenwich, Maze Hill, Blackheath, Tower Hill, Westminster and Charing Cross stations will be restricted at peak times and some entrances may operate one-way crowd flows. Spectators are being actively steered towards the DLR and the Jubilee line, both of which parallel the route at Canary Wharf, Canada Water and Westminster without crossing any of the closed roads.
Organisers are reminding the public — and particularly the 55,000 runners making their way to Greenwich on Sunday morning — that driving to any start or finish area is not a realistic option and that all official bag-drop and transfer logistics depend on runners using the provided train and Tube connections. The London Marathon Events team has published downloadable resident packs by borough on its website, along with an interactive closures map and a live transport update feed that will run throughout race day. For anyone not planning to spectate, the advice from both TfL and London Marathon Events is unambiguous: if your journey does not begin or end on the route, choose any other Sunday of the year to make it.