London Marathon '26 Weekend Guide
The gun goes off on Sunday, April 26, 2026, and everything before it is the story we're telling here. 130+ side events sit around the race — pop-ups that soft-open as early as April 10, a Saturday shakeout morning that is arguably the busiest single block of the European running calendar and afterparties stacked from Sunday lunch straight through to Monday afternoon medal portraits.
This is the second London on the new guide (after London 2025) and the first we've covered with city-side brand houses at this density. The spring arc is almost closed: Tokyo opened it, LA and Berlin Half filled out the middle, Boston last week set the template and a lot of the same houses — Tracksmith, Nike, HOKA, lululemon, Bandit, Peloton, New Balance — moved straight across the Atlantic and doubled in size.
Consider this the companion read to our Instagram post: a walkthrough of race week, with links into the full London 2026 guide whenever you want the map, the filters or the add-to-calendar. Things will still shift between now and Sunday — new events, venue changes, hours. Treat the list as a starting point, not a spreadsheet.
Top 5 trending this week
The five London 2026 event pages pulling the most traffic on marathon-weekend.com over the past seven days — a decent proxy for which activations the wider running internet is already planning around.
Pop-ups and multi-day experiences
Eighteen pop-ups sit on the map for race week. A couple open their doors in mid-April; most cluster Thursday to Sunday; the tail end of the Saucony Depot and the Runna house stretches into medal Monday. These are the fixed points — the ones to anchor your week around and drift back to between runs. Full list on the Pop-ups filter.
On LightSpray™ Tour London
Fri Apr 24 through Sun Apr 26. On rolls its LightSpray tour into London with roundtables, lunch runs and a sunset shakeout built around the spray-on upper. If you want to try the shoe and stay for the programme, this is the one place it all lands in the same room.
PUMA The NITRO™ Lab — London Marathon 2026
Fri Apr 24 through Sun Apr 26. PUMA's NITRO Lab is the brand's biggest London race-weekend activation to date — fit stations, pace-bumper sessions and a run-club-style programme stacked across the three days before the gun. Currently the second-highest-trafficked event page of the week.
CENTER FOR BEGINNERS — Endless Runners (London Marathon Week Pop-Up)
Thu Apr 23 through Sun Apr 26. Minor Planet and PROGRESS RUNNING CLUB take over a space for a week-long zine, capsule and community pop-up. The most "crew-first" of the London houses — more lo-fi, more local, less booth.
Runlimited™ Club Lounge
Wed Apr 22 through Sat Apr 25. A four-day clubhouse co-programmed with Bandit, Coros, Hyperice, Lucky Saint, Maurten, Nike, Roley's, Sums, The Running Room and Wahoo. Open bar, DJ sets, recovery and a Nike pre-flight dinner mid-week. If you can only pick one multi-brand hang, this is it.
Saucony RUSH London Depot
Tue Apr 21 through Sun Apr 26. Saucony's RUSH Depot is the earliest-opening of the branded houses — six days of fit sessions and a Rinse FM launch party on Thursday. Worth knowing about even if you're coming in later in the week; the Depot stays open through race morning.
Also running as pop-ups
Thirteen more hubs round out the week — each worth a drop-in, but we'll let the Pop-ups filter do the heavy lifting on detail:
- Cadence x Nike Fuel Hub (Apr 10 – Apr 25)
- LNDR London Soho Pop-Up (Apr 16 – Apr 27)
- HOKA Shoreditch Pop-Up (Apr 16 – Apr 26)
- Tracksmith London '26 Marathon Weekend (Trackhouse Pop-Up) (Apr 22 – Apr 27)
- SOAR × LDN26 — X RACE Pop-Up (Apr 23 – Apr 28)
- Peloton 2026 London Race Weekend (Apr 23 – Apr 28)
- Apple London Marathon 2026 (Apr 23 – Apr 26)
- Knees Up Race Market (Apr 24 – Apr 26)
- UVU Reverie Pop-Up (Apr 24 – Apr 25)
- New Balance Run House at Somerset House (Apr 24 – Apr 26)
- Runna London Race Weekend 2026 (Apr 24 – Apr 27)
- Represent 247 × WHOOP London Marathon Weekend (Apr 24 – Apr 25)
- MARCHON Open House (Sat Apr 25)
Day by day
Race week opens gently in the houses, climbs into a Thursday-Saturday stack of panels and shakeouts, peaks on Sunday and exhales on Monday. The picks below are the non-pop-up events pulling the most traffic day by day on marathon-weekend.com — not a complete list, just the five-or-so you'd be most likely to bump into other runners at.
Thursday, April 23
The first busy day. If you want a shakeout without the Saturday elbows or a panel you can actually get near the front of, this is it.
Runner's World x lululemon London Marathon Shakeout Run & Q&A
The third-highest-trafficked page of the week. A Runner's World / lululemon shakeout stitched together with a Q&A — less about the miles, more about the conversation.
Nike x Runlimited™ Pre-Flight Dinner
The Runlimited × Nike dinner is the mid-week invite-feeling event the crew-side traffic clicks through on. If you've been at Runlimited during the day, come back for this.
Friday, April 24
By Friday the taper wins. Easy miles before lunch, then the programme pivots to pasta, podcasts and the last serious panels of the week.
London Marathon 2026 Shakeout Run & Carb Load with runWestin
The runWestin carb-load is the sleeper hit in the Friday traffic — a shakeout that delivers on the "meet-and-eat" promise.
LNDR London Shakeout Run
The Friday-morning LNDR shakeout is a steady non-brand-booth pick that's been climbing the trending list all week.
The Runna Podcast Live with Russ Cook (The Hardest Geezer)
A live podcast recording with the Hardest Geezer is the only "evening talk" on the Friday page getting consistent click-through.
Saturday, April 25: pre-race day
This is the peak. More than twenty shakeouts overlap between 6am and 11am — we'd argue it's the single densest morning of any major marathon's 2026 calendar. Don't try to chain them; choose by crew, postcode or vibe and commit. The full grid is on the Shakeouts filter.
lululemon x Run Dem Crew x Mafia Moves — London Marathon Shakeout Run
The most-clicked event page of the London '26 week, and it isn't close. The RDC × Mafia Moves × lululemon crossover is the flagship Saturday shakeout.
Cadence Team Run 10km — Pre-Marathon
Ten kilometres is unusually long for a race-eve shakeout, which is exactly why it's trending. Treat it as the Saturday long-warm-up option.
Runna Shakeout Empowered by lululemon
The Runna flagship shakeout with lululemon's backing — the one that pulls the Runna audience in bulk.
Bandit Community Design Session
Bandit skips the shakeout and runs a community design workshop instead — a quieter, crafted alternative to the morning run stack.
R.A.D® London Reverse Marathon
R.A.D's reverse marathon is the Saturday-night racing pick, not a shakeout. If you're not running on Sunday but want to race this weekend, this is the one.
Sunday, April 26: race day
Morning belongs to the course. By early afternoon the houses flip into celebration mode and stay there until last orders. Full list on the Parties filter.
lululemon × Run Dem Crew × Mafia Moves: The Afterparty
The RDC × Mafia Moves × lululemon afterparty picks up the thread from the Saturday shakeout and closes it out.
First to the Trackhouse & After Party
The Tracksmith Trackhouse afterparty — the traditional post-race gathering spot on the west end of the course.
HOKA Hub Closing Party — Femi Koleoso
The HOKA Hub closes the week out with Femi Koleoso on the decks. The only race-day party with a named headliner on the trending list.
London Marathon Wrap Party
The generic-named one is actually the late-Sunday consolidation — the party people end up at when the earlier ones wind down.
Marathon Day with Apple Music
Apple Music's race-day set sits inside the Apple pop-up — good if you want the party without the afterparty intensity.
For spectators on race day
Not running? You've got a good spectating stretch to work with: four branded cheer zones bunched in the final three miles, right where runners need it most. Set up on one, bring a sign and commit for the full field.
Full spectator map on the Cheer zones filter.
Monday, April 27: recovery & medal day
A much softer day than Sunday — mostly medal engraving, portrait moments and a slow roll back through the course. Go if you want the week to end on a quiet note rather than with a hangover.
The Runna Bus: Victory Lap & Medal Portraits
The Runna bus victory lap is the standout of the quiet Monday — medal portraits and a slow roll past Sunday's course. Trending strongly into race week.
Peloton Post-Race Celebrations — Medal Engraving & Photo Moments
Peloton keeps its house open for medal engraving and photos the day after. The quiet close of race week.
The full guide
Call this the curated edit. The whole thing — every event, every brand, with map and filter — lives on the London workspace:
Every event page has an Add to Calendar button — hit a few and you'll have a personal race-week schedule in under five minutes. Missing something? Drop it in the Instagram comments or submit it on the site and we'll pull it into the next build.
Event details as of 2026-04-20 and subject to change. All data from the marathon-weekend.com listings; trending ranks from GA4 last-7-days screenPageViews on /london/2026/events/*.
