Here is the version of Marathon Sunday that actually happens on the ground in Manhattan: First Avenue closes from the Queensboro Bridge at 59th Street up to roughly 138th Street, Fifth Avenue closes from about that same point in Harlem down to the park entrance at 90th Street, and Central Park's drives go car-free for the day. That is the footprint. The FDR Drive keeps running. The East River tunnels keep running. The Central Park transverse roads, the ones that let cross-town traffic cut through at 65th, 79th, 86th and 97th Streets, keep running. All three airports operate on a normal Sunday schedule. The island does not shut down on November 1. Two avenues and a loop through the park do.
That distinction matters more this year than usual, because 2026 marks the marathon's 50th anniversary as a five-borough race, first run that way in 1976, and because New York Road Runners just made news for changing the course for the first time in 15 years. The change is real. It is also entirely outside Manhattan, which tells you something about how fixed this island's piece of the route has become.
What Actually Closes, Block by Block
The marathon enters Manhattan around mile 16, coming off the lower roadway of the Queensboro Bridge from Long Island City. From there it runs north on First Avenue, past the Upper East Side, through Yorkville and into East Harlem, before crossing the Willis Avenue Bridge into the Bronx. After a single mile in the Bronx, runners come back into Manhattan over the Madison Avenue Bridge and turn south, running down Fifth Avenue through Harlem, entering Central Park at 90th Street near what's known as Engineers' Gate, then continuing down to Columbus Circle before the course loops back into the park for the finish beside Tavern on the Green.
That's the geography behind the closures:
- First Avenue, roughly 80 blocks, from the Queensboro Bridge at 59th Street north to about 138th Street
- Fifth Avenue, from around 138th Street south to the Central Park entrance at 90th Street; the course then continues through the park toward Central Park South and Columbus Circle
- The Central Park drives, closed to vehicles for the full day
- No buses cross Fifth Avenue while the race is running
Course-wide, this year's closures run on roughly the same clock New York Road Runners and the NYPD have used before: streets along the route close around 7 a.m. and reopen through the day as the last runners and course crews clear each section. In past years, First Avenue's long stretch has reopened in stages, generally somewhere between 2 and 5 p.m., moving north to south as the field thins out. NYPD and NYRR publish the confirmed 2026 closure and reopening schedule closer to race day, but the shape of it has held steady for years: the avenue closes early and reopens late, in pieces, not all at once.
What that means if you live east of Third Avenue between 59th and 138th Streets: your cross streets to First Avenue itself will be closed for most of the day, but Second and Third Avenue keep moving, just slower, since they absorb the traffic First Avenue would normally carry.
What Stays Open, and Why It's the More Useful Fact
Most marathon-day guides lead with the closures. The more useful fact for someone who already lives here is what doesn't close. The FDR Drive stays open along its full length, which means the fastest way to move north-south on the east side that day is often the highway, not the surface streets next to it. The East River tunnels, the ones carrying subway and vehicle traffic under the river, run on their normal schedule. The Central Park transverses, the below-grade roads that cut through the park at 65th, 79th, 86th and 97th Streets, stay open even while the drives above them are closed to cars.
All three area airports, JFK, LaGuardia and Newark, operate normally. If you're picking someone up or dropping someone off that Sunday, the airport run itself isn't the complication. Getting across Manhattan to reach the airport route is.
The Blocks That Turn Into a Party
Not every closed block is just an inconvenience. First Avenue between roughly 90th and 110th Streets, corresponding to miles 16 through 18 of the course, is one of the more reliably festive stretches of the entire race. It's dense with bars and restaurants, and on marathon Sunday the sidewalks fill early and stay full for hours, with the avenue's usual weekend brunch crowd essentially merging into a spectator crowd. The N, Q, R, 4, 5, 6 and F trains all get you close.
Keep heading north and the tone shifts without losing energy. East Harlem, also known as Spanish Harlem, picks up around mile 18 and carries through mile 20, and NYRR specifically calls it one of the best places to help keep runners' motivation up late in the race. Just past that, at First Avenue and 120th Street, is the Charity Cheer Zone, built around the thousands of runners who took on the 26.2 miles while raising money for one of NYRR's charity partners.
If you're not running and not watching anyone specific, this stretch of First Avenue is worth treating as a neighborhood event in its own right, the kind of thing that happens once a year on a schedule you can actually plan around.
The Route Changed. Manhattan Didn't.
The genuinely new piece of information this year came out of the Bronx, not Manhattan. For the first time in 15 years, New York Road Runners altered the marathon course. After crossing the Willis Avenue Bridge, runners will now turn onto East 135th Street, head up Alexander Avenue, then loop through East 141st Street and Third Avenue before rejoining the course at East 138th Street to cross the Madison Avenue Bridge back into Manhattan. The old routing looped around a block that included a supermarket, effectively cutting the store off from its own neighborhood for the day. The new loop avoids it entirely.
It's a small adjustment in absolute terms, about a mile of Bronx streets, but it's the first time NYRR has touched the course in a decade and a half, and it happened in the same year the race is marking its 50th anniversary as a five-borough event. That combination is exactly why the fact that Manhattan's two avenues went untouched carries weight. First Avenue and Fifth Avenue, by contrast, remain where they've always been. That contrast is a signal that Manhattan's stretch of the course has become close to structurally fixed, the geometry that makes the rest of the route work rather than a segment anyone is looking to adjust.
The Rest of Race Week, If You're Keeping Track
The marathon itself is one day, but the lead-up runs through most of the last week of October. The TCS New York City Marathon Kids Kickoff, a free youth event, opens the week on Sunday, October 25. The marathon expo, where every registered runner has to pick up a bib in person, since there's no race-day pickup, runs at the Javits Center from Thursday, October 29 through Saturday, October 31.
That Saturday also happens to be Halloween, and it's race week's other public event: the Abbott Dash to the Finish Line 5K, which starts at 8:45 a.m. in Midtown and finishes at the marathon's own finish line in Central Park. Costumes are allowed on the course that day, though face coverings and oversized outfits aren't, since it's still a timed road race and not strictly a parade.
Then comes Sunday, November 1: the wave starts at Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island, the course through Brooklyn, Queens, the reworked mile in the Bronx, and the two Manhattan avenues that will look, on the map at least, exactly like they did last year and the year before that.
If you're on First Avenue or Fifth Avenue that weekend, the closures aren't a surprise. What might be is how little of the island they actually touch.
Marathon Sunday is one more reminder of how specific New York's daily rhythms can get, block by block, avenue by avenue. If you're thinking through what living on one of those blocks actually looks like the other 364 days of the year, Irene Sarri is a good person to ask.
