The marathon and Tommy’s Manchester Half had been due to take place on October 11

The 2020 Manchester Marathon and Tommy’s Manchester Half events have both been cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The races had been scheduled to take place on October 11 after the marathon was moved from its original date of April 5.

The 2020 marathon had been planned to be the event’s biggest edition yet, with 26,000 runners set to take on a new route through the city centre.

“We understand that our runners have put many hours of training and planning into these events and the uncertainty has only added to their frustrations,” said Nick Rusling , CEO of event organiser Human Race.

“We have explored all opportunities of hosting these events in 2020 with the safety and wellbeing of our runners, supporters, crew and volunteers as our primary focus. Having made the tough decision to cancel this year’s events we are now redirecting our efforts into planning next year’s Manchester Marathon on Sunday April 11.

“We believe, when we combine the resilience of runners with the friendliness of Manchester, this will bring a seriously potent mix of positivity and will become our greatest event yet.”

Runners entered into the 2020 events will receive automatic entry into next year’s Manchester Marathon or Manchester Half.

On Monday it was confirmed that the Bank of America Chicago Marathon would no longer be taking place on October 11.

Last month organisers of the TCS New York City Marathon and BMW Berlin Marathon announced that both of those events, which had been planned for November 1 and a rescheduled date of September 27 respectively, had been cancelled, while the 2020 Boston Marathon has also been called off as an in-person race.

The Virgin Money London Marathon, planned for a rescheduled date in October, is now the only remaining 2020 Abbott World Marathon Majors event still set to take place.