Chester Marathon Road Closures: Sun 11 Oct, 7.30am to 5pm

The MBNA Chester Marathon is on Sunday 11 October 2026, starting at 9am from Chester Racecourse. It closes roads across the city centre, out through Eccleston and Pulford, over the border into Wales, and back through Holt, Farndon, Churton, Aldford and Huntington. If you live on the route or need to drive through it, this is the day to plan around.

Updated 3 October: the organiser’s live road closure map now carries the 2026 dates. Castle Drive shuts from 7am on Saturday 10 October to 8pm on Sunday, parking bans run 5pm Saturday to 5pm Sunday, and the city centre closes 7.30am to 11am. The mini marathon has sold out.

Three races run from the Roodee that morning.

The organiser’s own pages disagree with each other on two of those figures, so check your race pack rather than any website:

• The metric marathon start is 10am on the race’s own page at Active Leisure Events, but 10.10am in the FAQ on the marathon page of the same site, and 10.10am again on RunThrough’s listing.
• The mini marathon start is 10.30am on the race pages (updated 2 October), but the entry system, which is the organiser’s own, still says 10.20am.
• The metric distance is given as 26.2km on the race card and 26.6km on both the entry system and RunThrough.

Can you still enter? Two of the three are full

The marathon and the metric marathon are both full and taking waiting list entries only, checked on 3 September 2026 on the organiser’s own entry system (marathon, metric marathon). The wording is “This event currently has a waiting list, you can complete a waiting list entry and if a place becomes available you will have 24 hours to accept the entry.” Payment is only taken if a place is offered and you accept it. RunThrough’s listings for both races say “EVENT SOLD OUT” and point at the same waiting list.

The mini marathon has now sold out too. On 3 October the organiser’s entry page showed its only entry option as “Sold out”. It was £9 plus a £1 donation to the Hospice of the Good Shepherd, so £10 in total, plus a 1.5% and 50p admin charge, and entries were due to stay open until race morning. It is roughly a mile, entirely inside the racecourse, aimed at children, and a parent running alongside has to enter too. Numbers and T-shirts must be collected in person, either 2pm to 5pm on Saturday 10 October or 7.30am to 10am on race day. Miss 10am and the race charity may sell your place.

Prices, for the record, since they set what a waiting list place will cost:

UK Athletics members get £2 off at checkout. A booking fee of 5.7% plus 20p is added. There is a “Green Runner” option at the same price where you give up the medal, shirt and goody bag and the cost goes to the race charity instead.

One date is easy to misread. 1 October is not an entry deadline, it is the cut-off for race packs being posted: enter after 11.59pm on Thursday 1 October and you collect your number from the help desk instead. The FAQ on the same website gives that cut-off as 26 September, so the two do not agree.

When the roads reopen

One rule governs the whole day: the cut-off is six hours and roads reopen in line with that pace. This is a rolling closure, not a blanket one. A street near the start is clear long before a village at 21 miles.

Two points on the course close hard, and the organiser publishes both times (Active Leisure Events):

• 13 miles, the junction of Borras Road and Rossett Road: closes after 12.10pm.
• 21 miles, Aldford: closes after 2pm. Runners arriving later are taken to the finish on the sweep bus, because the road on towards Huntington is “a very busy road once reopened, with no pavement”.

The full road list

The 2026 times are now on the organiser’s own interactive road closure map, which it says “will always show the most up to date plan”. Checked on 3 October 2026, it gives these 2026-dated closures:

• Castle Drive: closed from 7am Saturday 10 October to 8pm Sunday 11 October
• No parking from 5pm Saturday 10 October to 5pm Sunday 11 October on the streets marked, with the warning that anyone parked illegally or across a driveway will be ticketed by the police
• The start: westbound closure 7.30am to 10.45am, with a full closure for each race start, roughly 8.45am to 9.15am and 9.45am to 10.15am
• City centre: 7.30am to 10.45am and 7.30am to 11am, with no right turn from Foregate Street into Love Street and a run of banned turns on Delamere Street and George Street
• A51 Christleton Road westbound: down to one lane, 9.30am to 4pm
• Pulford’s St Mary’s church is reachable via Doddleston Lane before 9.45am and after 11am; Grosvenor Garden Centre from 10.30am, southbound only

The other closure windows on the map, 8am to noon, 8.30am to 5pm, 9am to 2pm, 9.15am to 3pm, 9.30am to 5pm, 10.15am to 12.30pm and 11am to 4pm, match the 2025 order road for road, so the table below is the best guide to which street is which. One item on the map is a leftover: the Little Roodee car park closure is still labelled with last year’s dates (4 and 5 October); for 2026 the organiser’s FAQ gives Friday 9 to Monday 12 October, below.

The council has not published a 2026 traffic order on its website or the Public Notice Portal (checked 3 October). The 2025 order is still online in full: Churton Parish Council has kept the 2025 order as a PDF, and the council’s own website still hosts the 2023 one.

These are the closures the 2025 order made, for the equivalent Sunday. The 2026 map uses the same time windows.

Three things in that order catch people out:

• There was no access to Aldford at all between 10.30am and noon. The council spelt that out in the diversion notes.
• A 20mph limit applied on the B5130 from Chester Road in Huntington to The Hill in Aldford, 8am to 5pm.
• Waiting was banned from 5pm on the Saturday for 24 hours, including for Blue Badge holders, on Churton Road in Farndon, Cross Street and Green Street in Holt, Sandy Lane in Boughton, Chester Road in Huntington, Church Lane, Chapel Lane and The Hill in Aldford, South View Road, Grosvenor Park Road including the residents’ bays, and The Groves.

The council’s diversions sent traffic off Sealand Road and New Crane Street via Deva Link and Parkgate Road, and southbound B5130 traffic via Sandy Lane and The Hill, or round by the A5115, A41 and A534.

Getting in and out of each village

The organiser publishes access routes as well (Active Leisure Events road closures):

• Into Chester city centre: the A483, A540, A5116 and A56 stay available
• Holt and Farndon: the A534 is open throughout, reached from the A483 or A5156 to the west or the A41 to the east. The old bridge over the Dee is closed
• Churton: leave via Sibbersfield Lane to Farndon and the A534
• Aldford: the 2026 map expects outbound runners past Chapel Lane and Lower Lane between 10.30am and 12.30pm. If you need to drive between 10.30am and noon, park away from the closed roads and walk to your car. Either side of that the Chester Road bridge over Aldford Brook is marshalled, and all traffic goes via Chapel Lane and the A41. There is no access to Churton from Aldford
• Huntington: exit Meadow Lane and Butterbache Road via Woodlands Road, then the Gorse Way diversion

There is an interactive closure map on that page, and the organiser answers questions at Roadclosures@activeleisureevents.co.uk. Our roadworks and travel page carries anything else closed that week.

Parking, and the car park that will not be there

Little Roodee car park on Castle Drive is emptied and closed from 10pm on Friday 9 October until 5am on Monday 12 October, because it becomes the finish Event Village. That is the single most useful thing to know if you drive in, and it takes 452 spaces out of the city’s riverside supply for the whole weekend.

The rest, from the organiser’s FAQ:

• Chester Racecourse opens for runners to park at 6.30am and closes at 7.30am, and it is grass, so it depends on the weather. The spectator page adds that the car park reopens at about 11am
• Chester Football Club runs a pre-book park at £5, open 6.30am to 5pm, with the booking link in the digital event guide
• There is a drop-off loop on Hamilton Place, Goss Street and Crook Street, running clockwise: in at Hamilton Place, drop on Goss Street, out via Crook Street
• The organiser counts over 3,000 spaces within walking distance in the city centre

Chester station is about 1.4km from the racecourse, so allow 20 minutes on foot, not the ten minutes often quoted. Every council car park tariff, including the free bays the council’s own pages do not list, is on our parking in Chester page.

Runners’ bag drop opens at 7.30am in the Event Village, with collection 11.15am to 4pm. The marathon has 11 aid stations, the metric marathon 5, spaced 2.5 to 3 miles apart with bottled water at each.

Where to watch

These are the organiser’s own recommended spots and the windows runners pass through them.

If you are driving to Holt or Farndon, the organiser’s advice is to reach the A534 from the A41 southbound, turning right at Broxton roundabout, or from the A483 southbound, turning left at junction 7. Eastgate Street just after the start is the easiest place to catch both races on foot, and the Old Dee Bridge catches the marathon runners only.

The route

The start is inside the racecourse. Runners head west, then into the city past the Town Hall, the Cathedral, the Rows, the Eastgate Clock and the Amphitheatre, and out along Bridge Street and the Old Dee Bridge.

From there the course runs through Eccleston, past the Duke of Westminster’s Eaton estate, through Pulford, and into Wales at Lavister and Rossett. After a loop on the lanes it reaches Holt, crosses the old bridge at Farndon back into England, and returns through Churton, Aldford and Huntington. It is the only marathon in the UK that runs in both England and Wales.

The last eight miles are shared with the metric marathon, from Churton. Both finish down the Groves beside the Dee and onto Castle Drive.

This is the 16th Chester Marathon. The course records are 2:16:59, set by Marshall Smith in 2024, and 2:40:26, set by Julie Briscoe in 2013. Pacers run the marathon at 3 hours and every 15 minutes to 5 hours; the metric marathon has none.

What we will do with this page

We will add the council’s 2026 traffic order if it is published before race day, and check the organiser’s map again in race week for late changes.