The Manchester Marathon route, printed

Manchester is a flat run out to Altrincham and back, from beside Old Trafford to a finish on Oxford Road, and with a record field in 2026 it is the UK's second-biggest marathon.

The race starts on Bridgewater Way, close to Old Trafford, and spends its first several kilometres looping through the roads of Trafford before it settles into its real direction, which is south. From there the shape is simple. The course runs down through Stretford and into Sale, then on through Timperley to Altrincham, the far end of the course at about nineteen kilometres. The climbing for the whole route adds up to only around fifty metres, which gives Manchester its name as one of the flattest marathons in Britain, and on a still April morning there is very little on the ground to slow anyone down.

Altrincham's town centre is where the race turns for home, and the return does not simply retrace the way out. It comes back through Timperley and Brooklands into Sale, where Northenden Road and the Waterside, lined with cafés and pubs, are among the busiest places to watch, before rejoining the road north to Stretford. With about seven kilometres left the course swings east into Chorlton, where the local crowds come out in force, and then heads through Hulme towards the city. The flat profile still holds here, so whatever goes wrong in these kilometres is down to the distance rather than the road.

The finish moved in 2025 from near the cricket ground at Old Trafford to Oxford Road, and the final approach now runs up Oxford Road from the south to a line outside the University of Manchester. On the map the start and finish sit only a few kilometres apart, with the whole southern loop hanging below them. The course is measured with care: the races of 2013, 2014 and 2015 turned out to be 380 metres short because of an error in calibrating the measuring bicycle, and UK Athletics does not recognise times from them. About 42,000 runners took part in 2026, the race's largest field.