April is 'Marathon Month' at Alopecia UK. Not only does London Marathon take place in April, there are lots of other marathon events taking place this month too. 

Our 2025 Marathon Runners

This month five amazing runners, Rajan, Kerrie, Rachel, Sarah (pictured above) and Nick (also pictured above) will be using their own London Marathon ballot entries to raise funds and awareness for Alopecia UK. The London Marathon is the most popular running event in the world. Those who have ever applied to the public ballot will know that the odds are very much against you getting a place. So we are so incredibly grateful that our five runners have chosen to use their ballot place to make a difference and help raise essential funds for Alopecia UK.

Sarah says, “2024 was a tough year for our family, starting with Joshua losing all his hair just after his 13th birthday. He faced it with incredible courage, an inspiration to us all. I entered the London Marathon ballot on a whim, never expecting to get a place. When I did, I knew I wanted to give back to Alopecia UK for their invaluable support, research, and community. It’s an honour to take on this challenge and raise money for such a worthy cause."

Nick says, "In all my contact with Alopecia UK over the years, I have found it to be a very supportive and helpful charity. Knowing that Alopecia UK didn’t have any 2025 London Marathon places, it makes me very proud to use my ballot place to fly the flag for such a great cause that can only continue to do the work it does with the support of people in its community." You can read more from Nick in the blog post that he has written for us. 

The ballot for next year’s London Marathon will open in April 2025. Please keep an eye out for updates on the London Marathon website and don’t miss out on entering the ballot for 2026.

As well as our London Marathon runners, this month we also have Maisie and Scarlet taking on the Manchester Marathon, Lauryn and Charlotte tackling the Brighton Marathon, Casper crossing the Channel for the Paris Marathon and Leo heading to Italy for the Milan Marathon. Good luck everyone! We are so grateful to have your support. 

London Marathon 2026

We are beyond thrilled to announce that we have successfully secured a Gold Bond Scheme for the prestigious London Marathon. The long wait is finally over, after many years of missing out on charity places, we now have four charity places secured each year for the next four years, starting with the 2026 London Marathon.

This is your chance to achieve a lifetime dream and make a lasting impact on the lives of those impacted by alopecia. You can find out more about the charity places we have available here. To apply for one of our charity places, please complete our application form, before our closing date on Friday 27th June 2025. 

Important: To help us make the most of this opportunity please ensure you enter the public ballot too! The ballot will open later this month after the 2025 race. Keep an eye out for updates on the London Marathon website and don’t miss out on your chance to get a public ballot place. Whilst it is super exciting to have four charity places, we imagine we will receive more applications than we have places to give. As you can see from our 2025 runners, it is possible to get public ballot places and this can help Alopecia UK enormously to increase our number of runners. 

We’d love to see as many people as possible raising awareness, funds and representing Alopecia UK at next year’s event.

We will be allocating places to successful applicants by the end of July 2025. Stay tuned for updates and announcements as we follow the journey of our chosen runners and work together to make a positive impact.