New York City Marathon, live.

Five boroughs, five bridges, fifty years

The first New York City Marathon, on 13 September 1970, was laps of Central Park with 55 finishers. On 24 October 1976 it went out into all five boroughs, and the 2026 race marks fifty years of that course.

It starts in the start villages at Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island and goes straight onto the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge into Brooklyn, up Fourth Avenue, through Williamsburg and Greenpoint, over the Pulaski Bridge into Queens at halfway, across the Queensboro Bridge onto First Avenue in Manhattan, over the Willis Avenue Bridge into the Bronx and back over the Madison Avenue Bridge, through East Harlem, down Fifth Avenue and into Central Park to the finish at 67th Street on West Drive. For 2026 the Bronx section changes for the first time in 15 years, with a new turn via East 141st Street.

The 2026 race is on Sunday 1 November. Professional women go at 8:35 a.m., professional men at 9:05, then five waves at 9:10, 9:45, 10:20, 10:55 and 11:30, each split into blue, orange and pink starts. Fluids stand every mile from 3 to 25, except 5, 7 and 9. The course stays open at a 16-minute-mile pace from the last wave, and the official finish closes at 10:00 p.m. In 2025 the race had more than 59,000 finishers.

Spectators are not allowed on the start or on any bridge, and the organiser warns that phones may not work around the finish when the network saturates. Livebib is built for that gap. The runner shares a link to their own broadcast; it opens in a browser, no account and no app, and shows the position on the course line, the distance covered and a finish estimate that updates as the race goes, marked as estimated, never as measured. When the phone loses signal, the position is carried forward along the course instead of freezing. The runner decides who gets the link.