This is a preview article – click here to read about what turned out to be an historic day for marathon running.
The TCS London Marathon is always a special race and this year’s 46th edition is no exception.
The elite field are STACKED and all four defending champions – Sebastian Sawe, Tigst Assefa, Marcel Hug and Catherine Debrunner – return to defend their titles.
We are going to focus on the elites here but the London Marathon is all about the bigger picture and we’ve got all that covered off via these important links below:
- RELATED: London Marathon history, course records and more
- RELATED: What is a good finish time for the London Marathon?
Since 1981, the event has raised more than £1.3 billion for charity and this year’s Official Charity of the Year is Pancreatic Cancer UK.
Note too that the 2027 ballot opens this Friday (24 April) and we’ll publish full details then.
Start time and how to watch live
There are three key start times on Sunday 26 April 2025 and they are as follows:
The elite wheelchair races start from 8.50am. The elite women’s race begins at 9.05am. And that’s followed by the elite men and 59,000 amateur runners from 9.35am onwards.
All of those are local times and in terms of the last of those, that 09:35 in London is 10:35 in central Europe, 04:35 Eastern and 01:35 Western in North America.
In terms of how to watch, the BBC are the go-to broadcaster for watching the race. Those in the UK will have start to finish live coverage on BBC One while worldwide you can follow on the iPlayer.
In the United States, Canada and Australia there’s live coverage on Flotrack and for the rest of the world the full details are here.
And remember too there’s an official app to download to help you track the runners – whether that’s the elites or your friends and family.
The London Marathon course
The TCS London Marathon starts in Blackheath and ends at The Mall in front of Buckingham Palace, one of the most iconic finishes imaginable.
The route takes in many of London’s most famous landmarks, including Tower Bridge at close to the halfway point.
It is relatively flat and actually a net downhill race – 127 metres of ‘climbing’ and 162 metres of downhill.
Elite Wheelchair races
Swiss superstar Marcel Hug will be bidding for another record at this year’s TCS London Marathon.
The man known as the Silver Bullet tops the elite wheelchair fields and is aiming to draw level with British Paralympic hero David Weir with a historic eighth victory in London.
Weir himself will be one of the athletes looking to find a way to stop Hug’s seemingly unstoppable path to history. Also up against him once again are last year’s second and third-placed athletes, Tomoki Suzuki (JPN) and Jetze Plat (NED).
In the elite women’s wheelchair race, another dominant Swiss athlete heads up the field: Catherine Debrunner.
Debrunner has won the last two TCS London Marathons and was just seconds away from the world record in the 2025 race when she set a course record of 1:34:18.
Previous champions Manuela Schär (SUI) and Tatyana McFadden (USA) have also been confirmed for this year alongside British talent Eden Rainbow-Cooper, fresh from her impressive win in Boston on Monday!
In 2024, the TCS London Marathon became the first marathon in the world to make its prize money for wheelchair and non-disabled elite athletes exactly the same.
Elite Women
There’s no getting away from the fact that this isn’t quite the race we were hoping for.
When the London fields were first announced it looked like we were going to get the first clash between world champion Peres Jepchirchir, Olympic champion Sifan Hassan and 2025 London winner Tigst Assefa since the trio met at the Paris Games in 2024.
They are also the last three winners in London but it was announced in March that Dutch star Hassan had been ruled out after being hampered by an Achilles injury following an unfortunate incident while training on the treadmill.
And then she was joined on the sidelines by Jepchirchir, who won the Olympic title in Tokyo in 2021.
All of which means Ethiopia’s Assefa will be favourite to defend her title after she set a women-only world record of 2:15:50 in the race 12 months ago.
Her quickest marathon time of 2:11:53 from Berlin in 2023 is more than two minutes faster than the next best of Joyciline Jepkosgei of Kenya.
Jepkosgei ran the fourth-fastest time in history to win the 2025 Valencia Marathon in 2:14:00 and triumphed in London in 2021.
Her fellow Kenyan Hellen Obiri will be a threat too. She is making her London debut but has two New York City Marathon titles (2023 and 2025) and two Boston Marathon victories to her name (2023 and 2024) since moving up to the marathon distance.
There’s plenty of British interest too, not least around Eilish McColgan who ran 2:24:25 on her marathon debut here last year.
Elite Men
Thankfully all the biggest star names announced earlier this year have made it to the start line.
Defending champion Sabastian Sawe (KEN) looks to extend his 100% win record from his three marathons to date – and is predicting a course record time such is the calibre of the field.
For up against him are Jacob Kiplimo (UGA), last year’s runner-up, who is also the world record holder for the half marathon and the reigning Bank of America Chicago Marathon champion.
Also confirmed are Joshua Cheptegei (UGA), the 2024 Olympic Games 10,000m champion and world record holder for both the 5,000m (12:35) and 10,000m (26:11); the 2024 Olympic marathon champion, Tamirat Tola (ETH); and Yomif Kejelcha (ETH), who will be making his marathon debut after a sparkling track career that included a silver medal in the 10,000m at the 2025 World Championships in Tokyo.
Amos Kipruto (KEN), the 2022 TCS London Marathon champion, and Deresa Geleta (ETH) are other stellar names in this year’s line-up.
Unfortunately there will be no Emile Cairess as he’s not recovered from a calf problem in time so take a shot as the British record time of Sir Mo Farah, who will be one of the official race starters.
