Over a million people applied to run the London Marathon this year, the largest number of applicants in its history. As one of the World Marathon Majors, the annual London event is one of the biggest challenges on the running calendar, and raises tens of millions of pounds every year for charity.
OGT has a longstanding relationship with the Marathon. Last year, we were contracted to provide our tasty, wrapper-free energy bars for the inauguration of the new Green Zone, where runners were encouraged to tackle the course whilst leaving nothing behind. In 2026, we were back at the London Marathon Running Show to meet hundreds of thousands of expo visitors and introduce them - many for the first time - to our unique products.
Planning a major event activation like this is a challenge our small team always relishes. There are promotional materials to design and order, a shell scheme stand to book and fill, compliance and safety considerations to take care of and of course thousands of oat bars to be manufactured by our intrepid team and coated in our natural beeswax layer with our novel manufacturing technology.
Event build day was on the Tuesday, so a small team from our Marketing department drove down to London in a small van packed to the rafters with oat bars and equipment. It's always an unusual experience to see these expos being built up; the floor is covered in a protective film, everyone is walking around in high-vis vests, and there are forklifts and pallet trucks moving around everywhere. We got the stand built up in record time, and headed home for a good night's sleep to get ready for the live event days.
Across the four live days of the show, we must have spoken to tens or even hundreds of thousands of visitors who came over to our stand to try the world's first wrapper-free energy bars. The reception? Amazing! Time after time, people told us that the bars were super tasty, and we managed to sell hundreds of boxes to people who had never tried us before. The whole team really enjoyed talking to runners and their supporters, and hearing first-hand about runners' needs: we already know that our bars taste great, are easy on the stomach, are all-natural and deliver a hit of 26G of carbs, but hearing first-hand just how transformative they can be in giving people the opportunity to swap out the chemical soup gels and fuel with ease motivates us to keep pushing our products out to more and more people.
We were one of the busiest stands throughout the week with the crowd around us routinely several layers deep, and by the Saturday many of us were losing our voices! We'd met people from all over the world, and there were two questions that came up time and time again: where can I buy these bars, and when are you going international?!
We think of our oat bars as being just like an apple or pear: the natural layer is like the skin on a fruit, protecting the moist, tasty oat blend inside and allowing runners to wipe or rinse their bars, storing them in their running vest pockets and chowing down without needing to fumble with a wrapper. Increasingly, plastic pollution is a challenge for the London Marathon, and we're proud to have been part of the solution.
Runners on the Sunday left nothing on the table - and nothing behind - by fuelling with OGT. We're so proud of everyone who crossed the finish line and gave it their all, and we're looking forward to being back next year.
A big thank you to everyone who came to chat to us - keep in touch!
