The TCS London Marathon Running Show opened its doors at ExCeL London at 10:00 on Wednesday morning, firing the starting gun on the four-day build-up to Sunday's 46th edition of the race. The expo will run from 10:00 to 20:00 on Wednesday and Thursday, 09:00 to 20:00 on Friday and 08:30 to 17:30 on Saturday, and is the only place participants can collect their running number, timing chip and kit bag — collection is not available on race morning. Organisers are again advising entrants to visit early in the week to avoid the Friday and Saturday queues that routinely stretch the length of the South Hall concourse.
The logistical scale matches the record field size. London Marathon Events confirmed on Monday that more than 59,000 runners will be on the Blackheath and Greenwich start lines on Sunday, the largest mass marathon field in the event's history and the product of the record one-million-plus ballot that closed last April. A dedicated international desk has been set up inside the North Hall to process bib collection for runners travelling from outside the UK, with London Marathon staff reporting that early Wednesday foot traffic is heavier than at any previous opening day, partly because visitors wishing to ride the Elizabeth line service directly to ExCeL have pushed arrivals into the morning rather than the traditional post-work window.
Alongside bib collection, the Running Show doubles as one of the largest running trade shows in Europe. More than 200 exhibitors are in place across Halls S6 to S8, with each of the major shoe manufacturers using the weekend to debut their London Marathon-specific race colourways. Adidas has a prominent installation around its Adizero Adios Pro Evo 2 race kit, Nike is showing the Alphafly 4 and the long-anticipated Vaporfly Next% 4, and Puma will reveal the race-day version of the Fast-R Nitro Elite 3 first seen at Boston two days ago. Title sponsor TCS is operating its usual finish-line photo studio and Virtual Run activation. A Strava lounge, the Runna Coaching Corner and the long-running RunPod podcast stage are all back after successful debuts in 2025.
The expo is also where the bulk of the event's charity activity clusters. London Marathon Events is expecting the 2026 race to raise in excess of £73 million for good causes, eclipsing the £73.5 million milestone set last year and taking cumulative charitable fundraising through the event past the £1.4 billion mark. Charity partners including Cancer Research UK, the British Heart Foundation, Macmillan and the Matt Hampson Foundation have each booked a full stall for their runners to pick up charity vests and meet sponsored athletes. Sir Anthony McCoy will appear on the Matt Hampson Foundation stand on Friday afternoon ahead of his maiden marathon attempt on Sunday, and four-time Formula 1 world champion Sebastian Vettel is scheduled to meet supporters of the Brain & Spine Foundation and the Grand Prix Trust on Thursday.
Activity around ExCeL is only the start of the race-week programme. The ASICS London 10K sold out on Monday and will run around Docklands on Saturday morning as the expo opens for its penultimate day, while the event's press conferences at the Tower Hotel on Friday will see defending champions Sebastian Sawe and Tigst Assefa meet the media alongside men's and women's elite line-ups that feature four of the six fastest women in history. The Wednesday opening of the Running Show is, in that sense, less a single event than the first check-in to race week proper — a rolling four-day ceremony that hands 59,000 runners their numbers before sending them down to Greenwich at dawn on Sunday.