London Marathon Charity Places: How the Bond System Works

Every April the largest single block of runners on Blackheath is not there because of luck or a fast time. They are there because a charity bought their entry and they promised to raise money in return. Since the first race in 1981 the London Marathon has raised more than £1.4 billion for good causes, according to London Marathon Events, and the 2025 race alone raised £87.3 million, the highest total for any annual single-day fundraising event in the world.

The direct answer is this. A London Marathon charity place is an entry owned by a UK-registered charity, which has bought it from the race organisers and gives it to a supporter in exchange for a pledge to raise a stated minimum. The runner applies to the charity, not to the race. The charity chooses whom to accept, sets the fundraising target, and supports the runner through training and on the day. No ballot luck and no qualifying time is needed. What is needed is a cause, a fundraising plan and a commitment that runs to four figures.

How a London Marathon charity place reaches a runner

Think of the place as stock. London Marathon Events, the not-for-profit company that organises the race and passes its surplus to the London Marathon Foundation, sells entries to charities through several schemes. Once a charity holds an entry, it is the charity's to allocate. The organisers do not choose the runner and do not set the pledge.

That division of responsibility explains most of the confusion around charity places. A runner who emails the race asking for a charity place will be pointed to the directory of charities with entries available. A runner who wants to know the minimum must read the charity's page, because the organisers never fixed one. And a runner who drops out deals first with the charity, because the entry belongs to it.

The organisers' charity directory for the 2027 two-day edition listed more than 300 charities with places available when this page was checked in October 2026, split into separate Saturday and Sunday listings and searchable by cause. Those numbers change through a season as charities fill their teams, so treat them as a snapshot.

1. 1PurchaseA UK-registered charity buys entries from London Marathon Events through a bond, the charity ballot or another scheme
2. 2RecruitmentThe charity advertises its places and opens an application form, often before the public ballot result is known
3. 3SelectionThe charity chooses runners on their link to the cause and their plan to reach the fundraising minimum
4. 4PledgeThe accepted runner agrees the charity's terms, including the minimum and any registration fee
5. 5RegistrationThe charity assigns the entry and the runner completes registration with the organisers before their deadline
6. 6FundraisingThe runner raises money through a fundraising page linked to the charity, with Gift Aid claimed where eligible
7. 7Race dayThe runner wears the charity vest, passes its cheer points and is met at its reception after the finish

The general sequence; each charity runs its own application form and timetable within it.

One practical consequence follows. Because a charity has paid for its entries in advance, an empty place is money lost. That is why charities recruit early, ask searching questions on their forms, and set minimums they expect most runners to reach. It also explains why a small charity with a single place can be far more relaxed about who runs for it than a national charity with several hundred.

The Golden Bond scheme and how a charity gets one

Ask a charity fundraiser about London and the phrase that comes up first is Golden Bond. The organisers' charity documentation uses both Golden Bond and the shorter Gold bond for the same thing: a long-term agreement under which a charity buys a fixed number of guaranteed entries every year for a multi-year term. The terms were reset for the 2026 race. Each Golden Bond now carries four entries a year for four years; before 2026 a bond carried five entries a year for five years, and existing holders had their bonds cut to the new size.

What a bond charity gets

Certainty, mostly. A bond holder knows in advance how many runners it will field for each race of the term, which lets it build a London team into its annual fundraising plan, hire staff for it and promise corporate partners a set number of places. For a large national charity the London team can be one of the biggest single fundraising events in its calendar.

The places are guaranteed regardless of how many people enter the public ballot. In a year when the ballot attracts more than a million applications, as it has for recent editions, the bond is the reason a charity can still tell supporters that it has places to offer.

The Charity Partners FAQs published by London Marathon Events also record a detail most runners never hear about. Gold bond entries, Silver bond entries and advertising package entries are the only charity entries in the London Marathon eligible to roll over, and only for one year, provided the charity has met the organisers' fill-rate conditions. An entry left unused a second time expires. Charity ballot entries do not roll over at all, and charity entries for the organisers' other events expire if unused. For a bond holder that is a real protection, if a limited one: a place left empty one year is not necessarily a place thrown away.

Why each place costs the charity more than the public fee

The price a charity pays per bond place is not published on the organisers' public pages, and this page does not quote a figure for that reason. What is well documented by charities themselves is the shape of the cost. A bond place costs the charity several times the entry fee a ballot runner pays, and the charity is invoiced for its whole bond allocation each year, whether or not it recruits enough runners to fill it.

Then come the costs around the place: the vest, the training days, the staff who answer runners' questions for six months, the cheer points on the course and the reception after the finish. A charity's minimum pledge has to cover all of that and still leave a worthwhile sum for the cause. Hence the four-figure targets.

Joining the scheme

New bond places were scarce for years, because existing holders rarely gave their allocations up. The 2026 reset changed how a charity gets in. In November 2024 London Marathon Events opened applications for new bonds to charities that held none, allocated them by random ballot rather than from a queue, and said the change would bring 800 new charities into the race from 2026. A new applicant could ask for between one and five Golden Bonds, or a Silver Bond. The detail of the current terms, including the fill-rate conditions, is set in the organisers' agreements with charities, so a charity considering a bond should speak to the organisers' charity team rather than rely on second-hand accounts.

The judgement worth making is a plain one. The bond system favours large, established charities that can recruit hundreds of runners a year. It has done more for the reliability of London's fundraising than for the chances of a small local charity getting a foot in the door, and the smaller bonds and the charity ballot exist to correct that.

The Silver Bond, the charity ballot and the routes for small charities

The Silver Bond is the scheme most often described as the small charity's way in. The version in place from the 2026 race gives a charity two guaranteed entries a year for a four-year term, half the size of a Golden Bond; the older Silver Bond scheme, which many small charities had relied on, was phased out after the 2025 race. It is modest, and it is designed to be. A charity with two runners can still build a campaign around them, and one well-supported entrant can raise a sum that matters to a small organisation.

Then there is the charity ballot, which is the most transparent of the routes because the organisers publish its terms. For the 2027 race the charity ballot offered 500 places to 500 charities. Only UK-registered charities with no existing entries for that year's marathon could apply, and no charity could win more than one place. Applications for 2027 had closed by the time this page was written, with the outcome due to charities in December 2026.

Advertising packages and corporate routes

The organisers' charity FAQs refer to advertising package entries as a separate category, and these sit outside the bond schemes. Sponsors of the race also hold entries of their own and some pass them to charity partners. The arrangements are commercial and vary, but from a runner's point of view the experience is the same: the charity holds the place and the charity sets the terms.

Route for a charity	What it provides	Who it suits	Published detail
Gold (Golden) bond	Four guaranteed entries a year per bond for four years, from 2026	Charities fielding teams, often holding several bonds	Invoiced annually; unused entries roll over once, subject to fill-rate terms
Silver bond	Two guaranteed entries a year for four years, from 2026	Smaller charities	Unused entries roll over once, subject to fill-rate terms
Charity ballot	One place, won at random, for one year	UK-registered charities with no other entry that year	500 places for 2027, one per charity; no roll-over
Charity of the Year	A large guaranteed allocation for one race, tapering over the following three	One charity chosen by a panel each year	250 entries for 2028, then 50, 25 and 10
Advertising package	Entries attached to an annual commercial package	Charities buying wider visibility	Unused entries roll over once, subject to fill-rate terms

What a charity cannot do is resell. The organisers' FAQs state that charities are not permitted to sell entries to another charity once purchased. A charity with more places than runners in a given year has to fill them, roll them over where its scheme allows, or accept the loss.

For a runner, the moral of the table is that a small charity may hold just one or two places and may not hold one every year. Anyone who wants to run for a specific small cause should ask early, and should not assume that because the charity fielded a runner last April it has a place this year.

The pledge: who sets the minimum and what it pays for

This is the part of the scheme runners most often misunderstand. The minimum is set by each charity and by nobody else. The organisers sell the entry and that is the limit of their part in it. Two charities with places on the same start line can therefore ask for very different sums, and both are acting within the rules.

Why it runs to four figures

The minimum has to cover the charity's real outlay before any money reaches the cause. The place itself costs several times the public fee. The runner's vest, any training or information days, the fundraising support, the cheer point staffing and the post-race reception all come out of the same budget. A charity also has to plan for some of its runners falling short or withdrawing late.

Look at the charity pages for the 2026 and 2027 races and the pattern is consistent: the minimums sit in four figures, with £2,000 or more common among the larger national charities and some asking for more. That is a range drawn from reading charity pages up to October 2026, not a figure any rule fixes, and it moves from year to year as costs and demand change. A runner should take the number from the charity's own page on the day of applying and from nowhere else.

Different minimums for different runners

A charity may publish more than one figure. A runner with a place from the charity has one minimum. A runner who already holds a ballot or qualifying place and wants to run for the charity, covered further down, usually has a much lower one or none at all. Some charities have also offered a different figure for a corporate team or for a runner recruited through a partner.

What the pledge counts

The pledge is normally a target for money raised in the runner's name through the charity's chosen fundraising platform. The organisers' charity information names Enthuse as the fundraising platform linked to registration, and London Marathon Events states on its run-for-charity page that runners receive a personalised Enthuse page. Some charities also accept offline income such as a bucket collection or a company cheque, as long as it is paid in and recorded against the runner.

• 1400Raised since 1981, £ millions
• 87.3Raised at the 2025 race, £ millions
• 500Charity ballot places for 2027
• 250Charity of the Year places for 2028

Figures published by London Marathon Events; the cumulative total moves with every race, and the 2025 total is the one recognised as a single-day record.

Falling short of the target: the pledge in law and in practice

What happens if you do not raise enough for a London Marathon charity place? The honest answer is that it depends on the terms you signed, and that the range of practice among charities is wide.

Start with the law. A fundraising pledge is a promise made to the charity, and whether it can be enforced depends on how the charity has written its terms. Some charities word the commitment as an agreement to raise the minimum, and some go further and say that a runner who falls short will be asked to make up the difference personally. Others describe the minimum as a target and say plainly that they will never pursue a shortfall. Both kinds exist, and the runner agrees to one or the other at the point of acceptance.

Then the regulation. Charities in England that fundraise from the public are expected to follow the Code of Fundraising Practice, overseen by the Fundraising Regulator. The code's emphasis on treating donors fairly and not placing undue pressure on people applies to supporters as well as to the people they ask for money. In practice that is one reason most charities chase a shortfall with encouragement and extra time rather than with invoices.

The registration fee and the deposit

Many charities take a registration fee when they confirm a place. It is usually non-refundable and exists to cover part of the cost of the entry, so that a runner who drops out early has not cost the charity the whole price of the place. A few ask for a larger deposit or a payment that the runner forfeits if they withdraw. The fee is separate from the pledge and does not normally count towards it. Read the terms for which it is.

Gift Aid and matched giving

Gift Aid lets a charity reclaim basic-rate tax on a donation from a UK taxpayer, which adds 25p to every £1 given. HM Revenue and Customs has specific rules about sponsorship for events: Gift Aid can be claimed on sponsorship donations from UK taxpayers, but not on a payment a runner makes to secure their own place, and not where the sponsor receives a benefit in return. The rules on a runner sponsoring themselves are narrower still, and charities apply them with care. Charities differ on whether the Gift Aid they reclaim counts towards a runner's minimum. Some count it, some count it only up to a point, some exclude it entirely. It is one of the first questions worth asking.

Matched giving, where an employer doubles some or all of what a member of staff raises, is usually counted towards the target once the employer's payment reaches the charity. The timing catches people out. Employer schemes often pay weeks or months after the race, and the charity's deadline for the minimum may fall before then.

What charities actually do

The common pattern runs like this. The charity sets a deadline after the race, often a few weeks, for money to be paid in. It contacts runners who are short, offers ideas and sometimes extends the deadline. Where its terms require the shortfall to be made good, it asks for it. Where they do not, it thanks the runner for what was raised. Very few charities take a supporter to court over a marathon pledge, and the reputational cost of doing so would usually outweigh the sum. A runner should still sign only a pledge they mean to meet.

Applying for a charity place: forms, questions and timing

Charity forms open early. Many charities advertise places for the following April while the public ballot is still being drawn, and the result of the ballot does not reach entrants until July in recent years; results for the 2027 draw were sent on 9 July 2026. A runner who waits for a ballot rejection before looking at charities is applying to a smaller pool, because the most sought-after charities may already have filled their teams. How that draw works is set out in our guide to the London Marathon ballot and its random draw.

There is nothing to stop a runner doing both. The ballot and a charity application are separate processes. Accepting a charity place and then being drawn in the ballot creates a choice, and the decent course is to tell the charity at once so the place can be offered to someone else. Some charities will let the runner keep supporting them on the ballot place under their own-place arrangement.

What the form asks

Charity application forms vary, but most cover the same ground:

• The link to the cause. A charity with more applicants than places will usually favour someone with a personal connection: a relative treated by a hospice, a friend helped by a helpline, a runner who has volunteered for the charity.
• The fundraising plan. How the runner intends to raise the minimum, whether through an employer's matched-giving scheme, a network of colleagues, a local club or a series of events.
• Past fundraising. A runner who has raised money before is a safer bet, and charities ask.
• Running experience. Not a time, since charity places carry no qualifying standard, but enough to show the runner understands the training involved.

Some charities interview shortlisted applicants by telephone. Others work on a first-come basis and accept anyone who agrees the terms until the team is full.

When decisions are made

Large charities often run an application window and decide in batches, the first batch around the time of the public ballot result and later batches through the autumn. Smaller charities may decide within days. The general rule from the ballot page applies here too: charity applications run through summer and autumn until each charity's places are gone, and the popular causes close first.

Applying through	Typical timing	Decided by	What it asks
A Golden Bond charity	Opens in spring or summer for the following April	The charity's events team	Link to cause, fundraising plan, agreement to the minimum
A small charity with a Silver Bond or ballot place	Often later, once the charity knows it holds a place	Often a single fundraiser or committee	Usually a strong personal link and a realistic plan
The Charity of the Year	Recruitment for its large team begins once the title is announced	The charity	As for any charity, with a high profile on race day
An own-place arrangement	After the runner holds a ballot, Good For Age or club place	The charity	Proof of the existing place and a lower or no minimum

Own-place runners: running for a cause on a place you already hold

A sizeable share of the people in charity vests did not get their place from the charity at all. They won it in the ballot, qualified through the Good For Age scheme, or were given a place by their club, and chose to raise money anyway.

Charities welcome them, for an obvious reason: the charity has not paid for the entry, so every pound the runner raises reaches the cause without the cost of the place taken out first. The organisers encourage it too. Their run-for-charity page tells ballot winners that they can contact a listed charity to join its team.

The minimum for an own-place runner

Usually lower, sometimes absent. Charities set their own terms, so some ask for a modest target, some suggest a figure without requiring it and some simply welcome whatever is raised. The runner still gets a fundraising page linked to the charity and, in most cases, the charity's vest and race-day support.

What the charity still offers

Most of what a charity-place runner receives: the vest, the newsletter, training advice, a place at the reception after the race and cheering from the charity's points on the course. Some charities limit training days or race-day hospitality to their own-place runners where space is tight, and say so on their pages.

A note for qualifiers. A runner with a championship entry runs under UK Athletics rules in registered club colours, so they cannot wear a charity vest even while raising money for one. Good For Age and ballot runners have no such restriction.

What the charity gives its runners in return

The support package is how a charity competes for applicants, and it is worth comparing before choosing one.

The vest. A charity vest, normally in the charity's colours with its name large enough to be read from the pavement, is the most visible part of the arrangement. Runners are asked to wear it on the day, and the charity uses the photographs. The organisers' own run-for-charity page lists branded running vests among the perks charities provide.

Training and information days. Larger charities run training sessions, physiotherapy talks and nutrition evenings in the months before the race, often in London and sometimes in other cities. Smaller charities rely on emails and phone calls.

Fundraising help. Template letters, posters, collection tins, ideas for events and a staff member to answer questions. Charities know that a runner who reaches the minimum early is a runner who enjoys the experience and comes back.

Cheer points. Charities book spots along the course, often at well-known points such as the Cutty Sark and the Embankment, and staff them with volunteers who look out for their runners. For a runner in a crowd of tens of thousands, a cheer from people who have their name on a list matters more than it sounds. Where those points fall along the course is easier to picture with our mile-by-mile account of the route.

The reception. After the finish, many charities hold a reception in a hotel, hall or club near the finish on The Mall, with food, a massage, somewhere to change and somewhere for family to wait. The larger the charity, the more elaborate the reception tends to be.

None of this is standard across charities and the organisers do not require any of it. A small charity with one runner may offer a vest and a warm message. That is not a reason to avoid it.

Withdrawing: the place goes back to the charity

Injury takes out a share of every marathon field, and charity runners are no exception. The question is what happens to the place.

The entry belongs to the charity, so it goes back to the charity. The organisers' charity FAQs describe the mechanism: if a participant can no longer take part and the charity has another supporter to replace them, the original entry is cancelled, and the charity uses the resulting unallocated entry to register the new runner. The organisers publish a participant registration deadline for charities each year, and the FAQs state that a charity ballot entry still unallocated, or held by a runner who has not completed registration by that deadline, expires. A bond entry left unused in the same way may instead roll over once, as described above. After that point a withdrawn runner's place is simply lost to the charity for that year.

1. 1Runner tells the charityThe runner withdraws through the charity, not by passing the number on
2. 2Entry cancelledThe charity cancels the original entry on the organisers' system
3. 3Place unallocatedThe cancelled entry becomes an unallocated entry the charity still holds
4. 4New supporter foundThe charity offers it to someone on its reserve list or a new applicant
5. 5Registered before the deadlineThe new runner is registered before the organisers' cut-off, or the place is lost for that year

Based on the process described in London Marathon Events' Charity Partners FAQs; deadlines are set each year by the organisers.

Why places cannot be swapped privately

London Marathon entries cannot be transferred to someone else. That rule appears in the organisers' general FAQs, and it applies to charity places as firmly as to ballot places. A runner who hands their number to a friend breaks the conditions of entry, and so does the friend. The practical reasons are serious: the race holds medical information and emergency contacts against each number, and results are attributed by the chip in it. A charity also loses its record of who is running in its name.

Deferral and money already raised

The charity FAQs state that charity entries cannot be deferred for specific participants. A charity may choose to offer an injured runner a place the following year, but that is a fresh allocation from the charity's own stock, not a deferral by the organisers. What happens to money already raised is equally a matter for the charity. Donations made to the charity are the charity's, and most charities keep them and thank the runner rather than return them. If the runner comes back the following year, some charities count the earlier total towards the new minimum.

The Charity of the Year and what the title is worth

Every edition has one official charity, chosen by the organisers through an application and panel process, and it is a different kind of partner from a bond holder.

The terms for the 2028 title, published by London Marathon Events, show what is involved. Applications closed in May 2026. Shortlisted charities were told in June and invited to present to a panel of London Marathon Events staff in the week beginning 20 July 2026. To be eligible a charity had to be registered in the UK, show that it had successfully looked after at least 100 participants in a previous London Marathon or another mass-participation event, and show that it could raise at least £1 million from the partnership on the strength of the places provided and an effective campaign.

2028 race250entries

2029 race50entries

2030 race25entries

2031 race10entries

As published by London Marathon Events for the 2028 title; all charged at ballot price. Terms for other years may differ.

Show the numbers

Guaranteed entries for the 2028 Charity of the Year, by year

Item	Value
2028 race	250entries
2029 race	50entries
2030 race	25entries
2031 race	10entries

The places are the core of it: 250 entries for the year of the title, then 50, 25 and 10 in the three following years, all charged at the ballot price rather than the higher price a bond charity pays. On top of that come the exclusive use of the title for the twelve months from the end of the previous year's race, media features, introductions to the race's sponsors, public relations support and activity on race day.

How it differs from an ordinary bond holder

A bond holder has guaranteed places for many years and very little exposure beyond its own runners. The Charity of the Year has one year of very high exposure and a large team, then a tapering allocation. For a charity whose cause is less well known, the publicity can be worth as much as the money. Recent holders show the range: Samaritans for 2024, Pancreatic Cancer UK for 2025 and the National Autistic Society for 2027.

The £1 million eligibility threshold is telling. It means the title is not designed for small charities, whatever the size of their cause, and the organisers make no pretence that it is.

The scale of London Marathon charity fundraising since 1981

Charity was part of the race from the start. Chris Brasher and John Disley, who founded it after running the New York City Marathon, set it up with the aim of raising money for sport and recreation facilities as well as staging a race, and runners began fundraising for causes of their own almost at once. How that first race came about is told in our history of the London Marathon.

The cumulative total has moved past every milestone set for it. London Marathon Events now states that participants have raised more than £1.4 billion for charities since 1981. The race passed the one billion pound mark during the 2010s. Each April adds to the figure, so any total quoted here is a snapshot.

The single-day record

The 2025 race raised £87.3 million, which London Marathon Events and Guinness World Records recognised as the highest amount raised by an annual single-day fundraising event anywhere in the world. The race has held that record repeatedly, and each new total has tended to replace the last. A higher total in a later year would supersede the 2025 figure, which is why it is given here with its year attached.

Individual records have come from London too. Sir Steve Redgrave was recognised for raising £1.8 million when he ran in 2006, and Steve Chalke, founder of the Oasis charity, for £2.32 million in 2011. Those were records at the time they were set. They are worth mentioning less for the sums than for what they show: a single runner with a public profile and a determined campaign can raise more than most charities' entire London teams.

How much of the field runs for a cause

The organisers do not publish a single fixed percentage, and the share varies with the size of the ballot and the number of places sold to charities. What can be said safely is that charity runners form the largest single block of the mass field, ahead of ballot winners, qualifiers and club runners, and that own-place runners raising money push the share of people running for a cause higher still. A walk through any start area confirms it. The vests outnumber the club colours many times over.

Where the race's own money goes

One distinction is easy to miss. The money runners raise goes to their chosen charities. The race's own surplus goes to the London Marathon Foundation, the charity set up by the organisers, which funds sport and physical activity projects across London and the UK. A ballot entrant who chooses to donate their entry fee is giving to the Foundation, not to a charity of their own choosing. Those are two separate streams of money, and the charity places described on this page feed only the first.

What a charity place is worth, set against the other routes

For most people who want to run London, a charity place is the most reliable way in. The ballot gives a small chance and no control. The Great North Run and other British races have their own charity schemes, but London's is the largest by a distance, and its fundraising total dwarfs any other single event. The trade-off is plain. A charity place swaps luck for work: months of asking friends, colleagues and strangers for money, on top of months of training. For many runners that work turns out to be the part of the experience they remember longest. More on road running in England sits on our athletics coverage and across the England hub.