Oxford Half 2026: roads shut from 9am on Saturday

The Oxford Half is on Sunday 11 October 2026. The half marathon starts at 9.30am on Mansfield Road, the Schools’ Challenge race goes off an hour earlier at 8.30am, and the first road closures go in at 9am on the Saturday, a full day before anyone runs.

If you are trying to work out whether your street is affected, or whether you can get a car out on the Sunday morning, the whole answer is below. It comes from Oxfordshire County Council’s own published notice and order for the event, which carries the reference S26-018.

Is it on, and is it confirmed

Yes. Entry closed some time ago: the organiser’s website carries the line “OXFORD HALF 2026 IS OFFICIALLY SOLD OUT” and offers only a 2027 interest list. It is the fifteenth Oxford Half, and the fourth year running it has sold out.

One caution on the road closures. As at 5 September the county council’s page says it “proposes to make” the order, gives a date of order of 5 October 2026 and a coming into force date of 10 October 2026. So the closures below are the proposal, published in advance so people can object, not yet a signed order. In practice the schedules for an event like this rarely change, but the dates are worth re-checking in the first week of October.

One oddity worth flagging if you read the order yourself: its final article cites the order as the 2025 order and says it takes effect from 11 October 2025. That is a leftover from last year’s text. The notice, every schedule and the seal date all say 2026.

The road closures in full

Start and finish area, Saturday to Sunday

This is the one that catches residents out. It is a 36 hour closure, not a race-morning one, because the start and finish structures go up on the Saturday.

City centre, Sunday 6am to 4pm

North Oxford, Sunday morning

Marston and the A40, Sunday 7.30am to 1.30pm

Both A40 offslips at the Marston junction shut, so the usual way off the ring road into Marston and Summertown is gone for six hours. That is the single biggest thing to plan around if you live in the north or east of the city.

What changes direction, and what stops being enforced

Three normally one-way North Oxford streets are made two-way from 07:30 to 12:15, to give residents a way out while Banbury Road is shut:

• South Parade, between Banbury Road and Stratfield Road
• Oakthorpe Road, between Banbury Road and Stratfield Road
• Thorncliffe Road, between Banbury Road and Oakthorpe Place

Four restrictions are suspended for the day:

The St Cross Road filter suspension matters beyond the race: it is one of the six filters covered on our parking page, and it is switched off for ten hours that day.

Permit parking, pay and display and some disabled persons’ bays are suspended along the route. The council’s notice says marshals will manage residential access and deliveries, that some traffic lights may be switched off for marshal control, and that emergency services, event vehicles and controlled access to property are exempt.

Getting there and parking

There is no parking at the event site or in the city centre, and the organiser says so plainly. The event village is in University Parks, OX1 3RF, which is where bag drop, toilets and the information tent go. The start line is Mansfield Road, OX1 3SZ.

For runners driving in, the organiser has booked its own event park and ride at Unipart House, OX4 6LX: the car park opens at 06:30, shuttles to Oxford High Street run every 10 minutes between 07:00 and 08:30, and return shuttles run between 11:00 and 14:00. Spaces are limited and each car is capped at five passengers.

City park and ride at Redbridge, Pear Tree and Thornhill will also have extra buses on race morning, with shuttles from 07:00 and a 07:30 arrival deadline for runners. As at 5 September the organiser had not opened ticket sales for those three, and warns that a pre-purchased ticket does not guarantee a space because the sites stay open to the public. Ordinary park and ride charges and the £3 combined ticket are on our parking page.

Coming from London by train does not work. The organiser is blunt about it: the earliest London service into Oxford does not arrive in time to start the race, so either use the Oxford Tube, which runs hourly from 03:15 into Gloucester Green, or come up on the Saturday. From the south there is a Didcot Parkway shuttle, with 06:34, 07:10 and 07:46 departures for a 20 minute run into Oxford station.

Buses run their normal Sunday services but will divert and take longer. Oxford Bus Company had published nothing about the race on its service updates page as at 5 September, so route-by-route diversions are not yet knowable. Our roadworks and travel page tracks what else is dug up that week.

The route

The course starts and finishes on Mansfield Road and runs past the Sheldonian, the Radcliffe Camera, the Bodleian and the Bridge of Sighs before heading north through Summertown and Cutteslowe, out to Old Marston, and back through University Parks. The organiser labels its own route map “subject to final permissions”, which matches the county council still calling the closure order a proposal.

Entering, and the charity places

General entry is gone. Charity places are the only remaining route in, and several of the Oxfordshire charities have now sold out of theirs too. Helen & Douglas House, the race’s headline charity, says its 2026 places “have now sold out” and is running a waiting list; its place cost £25 to register with a £250 minimum fundraising pledge. Fees and pledges differ by charity, so check with the individual charity rather than assuming.

The organiser says more than £1.5 million was raised for over 180 charities at the 2025 race.

Sources

• Oxfordshire County Council, Oxford Half Marathon, 11 October 2026, notice, order and schedules, ref S26-018
• Oxford Half, event home page, sold-out notice
• Oxford Half 2026 travel information
• Oxford Half route information
• Helen & Douglas House, Oxford Half Marathon 2026
• Oxford Bus Company service updates, checked 5 September 2026