Sun 20 Sep 2026
24 Jul 2026 • 22 minutes read
The mile is back after sixty years, and yet there is no marathon in sight. Australia has arguably one of its strongest middle-distance line-ups in years and they are primed to perform. This is your guide to running at the 2026 Commonwealth Games, including what time to set your alarm each morning to cheer on the green and gold!
This guide is brought to you in partnership with Cocogen, the official hydration partner of RunDais.
The Commonwealth Games are back, and for the first time since 1966, so is the mile!
If you have been waiting for a running reason to care about Glasgow 2026, the return of the Commonwealth Mile is it, and it arrives with Australians right in the thick of it, including a genuine gold medal chance in Jessica Hull. From Monday 27th of July to Saturday 1st of August, the track at Scotstoun Stadium becomes the centre of the Commonwealth running world, and Seven’s own Bruce McAvaney believes Australia “has a genuine chance of coming home with 50 gold medals,” which is remarkable when you consider there are only ten sports on the whole program.
There is one thing to get straight up front. This is a track game. To keep the event lean and affordable, Glasgow cut every road race, so there is no marathon or road walks this year. All the running happens inside the stadium, which means faster racing, sharper finishes, and finals stacked into evening sessions you can plan your mornings around. It is also the most inclusive athletics program the Games have ever staged, with a record sixteen para-athletics medal events run right alongside the able-bodied races.
Australia’s 200m record holder and one of the most exciting young talents in world sprinting had already chosen to focus on the World Under 20 Championships before a season-ending hamstring injury ruled him out of competition for the remainder of 2026.
Disappointing? Absolutely. But it also opens the door to a deeper Australian team, one built around athletes who are not just the next generation, but are already competing at the very highest level.
Here is the good news for anyone worried about a week of no sleep. Glasgow runs two sessions a day, and only one of them is at a punishing hour here.
The primetime session:
Glasgow’s morning session runs 10:00am to about 1:45pm local, which lands here at 7:00pm to 10:45pm AEST that same evening. This is where nearly all the heats and semi finals sit, including both mile heats (meaning you’ll be able to watch the Australians qualify after dinner)!
The alarm session:
Glasgow’s evening session runs 6:30pm to about 10:30pm local, which lands here at 3:30am to 7:30am AEST the next morning. This is where almost every final is decided. The good news is that most finals sit in the back half of that session, from about 5:00am, so you can sleep a bit longer than you feared.
So the rhythm of your week is simple: qualify at night, medals at dawn.
Here is every running event at these Games, in Australian time.
| When (AEST) | Event | Round | Australians to watch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mon 27 Jul 7:10pm | Men’s 400m hurdles | Round 1 | Matthew Hunt |
| Mon 27 Jul 7:40pm | Men’s 100m | Round 1 | Lachlan Kennedy, Eddie Osei-Nketia, Rohan Browning |
| Mon 27 Jul 9:00pm | Men’s 110m hurdles | Round 1 | |
| Mon 27 Jul 9:25pm | Women’s 100m | Round 1 | Georgia Harris, Ebony Lane, Torrie Lewis |
| Mon 27 Jul 10:16pm | Women’s T38 100m | Round 1 | Ella Pardy, Rhiannon Clarke |
| Tue 28 Jul 4:15am | Women’s 800m | Round 1 | Sarah Billings |
| Tue 28 Jul 4:50am | Women’s T38 100m | FINAL | Ella Pardy, Rhiannon Clarke |
| Tue 28 Jul 5:05am | Women’s 10,000m | FINAL | Rose Davies, Lauren Ryan |
| Tue 28 Jul 5:50am | Men’s 3000m steeplechase | FINAL | |
| Tue 28 Jul 6:12am | Men’s T20 1500m | FINAL | Archer Hewett, Daniel Milone |
| Tue 28 Jul 6:27am | Men’s T38 100m | FINAL | Thomas McGough, Ullrich Muller |
| Tue 28 Jul 6:45am | Men’s 110m hurdles | FINAL | |
| Tue 28 Jul 7:30pm | Women’s 400m | Round 1 | |
| Tue 28 Jul 8:15pm | Men’s 800m | Round 1 | Peter Bol, Luke Boyes, Peyton Craig |
| Tue 28 Jul 9:00pm | Men’s 400m | Round 1 | Reece Holder, Thomas Reynolds |
| Wed 29 Jul 4:10am | Men’s 100m | Semis | Kennedy, Osei-Nketia, Browning |
| Wed 29 Jul 4:36am | Women’s 100m | Semis | Harris, Lane, Lewis |
| Wed 29 Jul 5:25am | Men’s 10,000m | FINAL | Ky Robinson |
| Wed 29 Jul 6:14am | Men’s 100m | FINAL | Kennedy, Osei-Nketia, Browning |
| Wed 29 Jul 6:40am | Women’s 100m | FINAL | Harris, Lane, Lewis |
| Wed 29 Jul 7:30pm | Women’s 200m | Round 1 | Mia Gross, Torrie Lewis, Monique Hanlon |
| Wed 29 Jul 8:10pm | Men’s mile | Round 1 | Oliver Hoare, Cameron Myers, Adam Spencer |
| Wed 29 Jul 8:32pm | Men’s 200m | Round 1 | Aidan Murphy, Calab Law, Lachlan Kennedy |
| Wed 29 Jul 9:33pm | Men’s T12 100m | Round 1 | Nathan Jason |
| Wed 29 Jul 9:51pm | Women’s 400m hurdles | Round 1 | Sarah Carli |
| Thu 30 Jul 4:15am | Women’s T54 1500m | FINAL | Eliza Ault-Connell, Mikaela Dingley |
| Thu 30 Jul 4:33am | Men’s 400m hurdles | Semis | Matthew Hunt |
| Thu 30 Jul 4:47am | Women’s 800m | Semis | Sarah Billings |
| Thu 30 Jul 5:10am | Men’s T47 100m | FINAL | Jaydon Page |
| Thu 30 Jul 6:23am | Women’s 3000m steeplechase | FINAL | Cara Feain-Ryan |
| Thu 30 Jul 8:30pm | Women’s 100m hurdles | Round 1 | Michelle Jenneke |
| Thu 30 Jul 9:05pm | Women’s mile | Round 1 | Abbey Caldwell, Claudia Hollingsworth, Jessica Hull |
| Thu 30 Jul 9:45pm | Women’s 400m | Semis | |
| Thu 30 Jul 10:10pm | Men’s 400m | Semis | Reece Holder, Thomas Reynolds |
| Fri 31 Jul 4:05am | Men’s 200m | Semis | Murphy, Law, Kennedy |
| Fri 31 Jul 4:34am | Women’s T47 100m | FINAL | Lexie Brown |
| Fri 31 Jul 4:45am | Men’s T12 100m | FINAL | Nathan Jason |
| Fri 31 Jul 5:05am | Women’s 200m | Semis | Gross, Lewis, Hanlon |
| Fri 31 Jul 5:45am | Men’s 800m | Semis | Bol, Boyes, Craig |
| Fri 31 Jul 6:18am | Women’s 5000m | FINAL | Rose Davies, Linden Hall, Jessica Hull |
| Fri 31 Jul 6:49am | Women’s 100m hurdles | FINAL | Michelle Jenneke |
| Fri 31 Jul 8:35pm | Mixed 4x400m relay | Heats | Luke van Ratingen, Cooper Sherman, Mia Gross, Jemma Pollard |
| Fri 31 Jul 9:18pm | Women’s T54 400m | Round 1 | Eliza Ault-Connell, Mikaela Dingley, Aimee Fisher |
| Sat 1 Aug 4:05am | Men’s 10,000m walk | FINAL | Isaac Beacroft, Tim Fraser, Declan Tingay |
| Sat 1 Aug 5:25am | Women’s 800m | FINAL | Sarah Billings |
| Sat 1 Aug 5:52am | Women’s 400m hurdles | FINAL | Sarah Carli |
| Sat 1 Aug 6:00am | Men’s 400m hurdles | FINAL | Matthew Hunt |
| Sat 1 Aug 6:25am | Men’s 200m | FINAL | Murphy, Law, Kennedy |
| Sat 1 Aug 6:46am | Women’s 200m | FINAL | Gross, Lewis, Hanlon |
| Sat 1 Aug 7:20pm | Men’s T54 1500m | FINAL | Sam Carter, Sam Rizzo |
| Sat 1 Aug 7:30pm | Women’s 10,000m walk | FINAL | Jemima Montag, Bec Henderson, Elizabeth McMillen |
| Sat 1 Aug 9:00pm | Men’s 400m | FINAL | Reece Holder, Thomas Reynolds |
| Sat 1 Aug 9:20pm | Women’s 400m | FINAL | |
| Sat 1 Aug 9:35pm | Women’s 4x100m relay | Heats | Australia’s women’s relay squad |
| Sat 1 Aug 9:55pm | Men’s 4x100m relay | Heats | Australia’s men’s relay squad |
| Sat 1 Aug 10:24pm | Women’s T38 200m | FINAL | Briseis Brittain, Rhiannon Clarke |
| Sun 2 Aug 4:28am | Women’s T54 400m | FINAL | Eliza Ault-Connell, Mikaela Dingley, Aimee Fisher |
| Sun 2 Aug 4:45am | Men’s 5000m | FINAL | Ky Robinson, Seth O’Donnell, Jackson Sharp |
| Sun 2 Aug 5:15am | Men’s 4x100m relay | FINAL | Australia’s men’s relay squad |
| Sun 2 Aug 5:26am | Women’s 4x100m relay | FINAL | Australia’s women’s relay squad |
| Sun 2 Aug 5:40am | Men’s 800m | FINAL | Peter Bol, Luke Boyes, Peyton Craig |
| Sun 2 Aug 5:50am | Men’s mile | FINAL | Oliver Hoare, Cameron Myers, Adam Spencer |
| Sun 2 Aug 6:19am | Mixed 4x400m relay | FINAL | van Ratingen, Sherman, Gross, Pollard |
| Sun 2 Aug 6:45am | Women’s mile | FINAL | Abbey Caldwell, Claudia Hollingsworth, Jessica Hull |
Please note: race times are taken from Australian Athletics’ official team media guide, published 23rd of July, and are listed in AEST.
Australians listed are entered in the event. For races with heats and semi finals, they will need to qualify to make the final, and a blank means no Australian is entered. Some first rounds may be cancelled if entries are low, and top ranked sprinters may be seeded straight into the semi finals, so check Seven’s live guide on the day.
The women’s mile is the last race of the entire Commonwealth Games. Sixty years since it was last run, and it closes the whole thing. If you set one alarm all week, we recommend it being this one!
Of everything on the Glasgow program, the return of the Commonwealth Mile is the moment, and to understand why, you have to go back to 1954.
At the Games in Vancouver that year, Australia’s John Landy lined up against England’s Roger Bannister in a race the world came to call the Miracle Mile. It was the first time two men had broken four minutes in the same race. Landy led for most of it, until Bannister swept past on the final bend to win in 3:58.8, with Landy just behind in 3:59.6. The photograph of Landy glancing back over his left shoulder as Bannister went by on his right became one of the most famous images in the sport, and there is a statue of that exact instant in Vancouver to this day.
If you want the full circle, Landy went on to become the 26th Governor of Victoria, and carried the Queen’s Baton into the MCG at the opening of the 2006 Commonwealth Games. Not bad for a man once frozen in bronze looking the wrong way.
Australia’s history in the Commonwealth mile runs deeper than that one race. In 1958 at Cardiff, Herb Elliott, the boy from Perth who trained on the Portsea sand dunes under Percy Cerutty and was never once beaten over the mile in his senior career, won the mile and the 880 yards, and led an Australian clean sweep with Merv Lincoln and Albie Thomas filling the podium behind him. He would go on to break the world mile record and take Olympic 1500m gold in Rome. The last time the Commonwealth mile was run, in Kingston in 1966, it was won by the Kenyan great Kip Keino. That is the company this event keeps.
Australia has always done well on this stage. No nation has won more Commonwealth Games gold, and the most successful Australian athletes of all, sprinters Marjorie Jackson-Nelson and Raelene Boyle, took home seven golds each. Sixty years after the mile was last run, it comes back, and this time Australia has a team ready to add to the story.
The mile is 1609 metres, that touch longer than the 1500m it replaces, and it closes out the entire athletics program on Saturday 1st of August. Jessica Hull put it plainly earlier this year: the mile is the race she is building everything around, “and it is last at Comm Games.”
Jessica Hull is Australia’s headline act and one of the best middle-distance runners on the planet. She took 1500m silver at the Paris Olympics in a time that made her the fifth-fastest woman in history over the distance, added World Championship bronze in 2025, and holds the world record over 2000m. The Wollongong runner arrives in Glasgow in the form of her life after winning the 3000m at the London Diamond League with a scorching last lap. “I am focusing my energy into winning races,” she said afterwards, “so to start well here, it puts me in a good position for the Commonwealth Games.” In Glasgow she doubles up, taking on both the mile and the 5000m.
Oliver Hoare knows exactly how to win one of these. He produced one of the great Australian Commonwealth moments at Birmingham in 2022, storming home to take 1500m gold, and because that event has now been retired, he is its Games record holder in perpetuity. He steps up to the mile here, chasing another title over a distance that suits his finishing speed.
Cameron Myers is the twenty-year-old the athletics world is talking about! The Canberra runner is ranked number one in the world this year over both 1500m and the mile, and back in 2023 he broke the world record for the fastest mile ever run by a sixteen-year-old. Glasgow is his Commonwealth debut, and it comes with a proper test attached. He lines up against Scotland’s Josh Kerr, who in mid July, just broke the world mile record (which stood for 27 years) and will run in front of a roaring home crowd. Kerr calls the mile a distance where “everyone understands it hurts.”
This event alone is worth the early alarm.
Australia is not done there. Abbey Caldwell, a bronze medallist over 1500m in Birmingham, and Claudia Hollingsworth, (trained by Australian legend Craig Mottram) and the reigning national champion at just twenty-one, both bring the women’s mile serious depth, while Adam Spencer joins Hoare and Myers in a genuinely stacked men’s field.
When: Saturday 1st of August, in the final evening session in Glasgow, which is the early hours of Sunday morning here in Australia.
Two laps, all guts, and Australia has a real chance in it!
Peter Bol remains one of the most watchable runners the country has produced. He took silver in Birmingham and has a way of making a nation hold its breath every time he moves to the front.
Sarah Billings enters Glasgow as Australia’s fastest ever 800m runner. Her national record of 1:57.01, set at the Paris Diamond League just weeks before the Games, announced her as a genuine medal contender
Luke Boyes and Peyton Craig round out a young, hungry group!
When: the finals fall across the closing days, with the women’s two-lap decided on Saturday 1st of August.
The longer track races reward patience, timing and resilience, and Australia arrives in Glasgow with one of its strongest distance squads in years.
Jessica Hull doubles back from the mile to contest the 5000m, arriving in outstanding form after a commanding victory in the London Diamond League 3000m just weeks before the Games.
She is joined by the vastly experienced Linden Hall (who holds the equal fastest time around the famous Botanical Gardens) and Rose Davies, Australia’s record holder over both 5000m and 10,000m, who will contest both distances. Lauren Ryan completes the Australian team in the women’s 10,000m.
In the men’s distance events, newly crowned Australian 5000m record holder Ky Robinson leads the charge after breaking Craig Mottram’s long-standing national mark (Craig still holds the fastest loop around The Tan in Melbourne)! He is joined by fearless racer Seth O’Donnell and the ever-improving Jackson Sharp, giving Australia genuine strength across the longer distances
When: the 10,000m finals come early in the program, while the 5000m finals land late in the week.
Barriers, a water jump, and little room for error. Cara Feain-Ryan makes her Commonwealth debut in the women’s steeplechase, one of the toughest tests on the track.
If you like it fast and loud, the short sprints deliver.
Lachlan Kennedy headlines the men’s 100m after breaking ten seconds just a couple of months ago, one of the quickest times an Australian has ever run, and he backs up in the 200m.
Eddie Osei-Nketia joins him in the 100m off a blistering collegiate season in the United States. He recently broke the 10 second barrier, twice with a wind assisted win. And he is ready to roll in Glasgow. “To have the chance to wear the green and gold on a major international stage means a lot,” he said on selection.
The experienced Rohan Browning adds a third string to the 100m, Aidan Murphy steps out in the 200m after a breakthrough 19.88.
On the women’s side, all eyes will be on Torrie Lewis. Australia’s fastest woman ever, the national record holder will chase medals in both the 100m and 200m after another outstanding season.
When: the 100m finals are decided midweek, with the 200m and 400m finals on Saturday 1st of August.
The relays add another layer of excitement. The men’s 4x100m team of Lachlan Kennedy, Eddie Osei-Nketia, Aidan Murphy, Christopher Ius and Calab Law brings together Australia’s new sprint generation, while the women’s 4x100m squad of Torrie Lewis, Chloe Mannix-Power, Monique Hanlon and Lara Roberts gives Australia one of its most exciting young relay combinations in years.
In the relay, individual speed is only half the equation. Four athletes, one baton, and the pressure of getting every exchange right.
Michelle Jenneke returns for a remarkable fourth Commonwealth Games in the 100m hurdles, as familiar a face as Australian athletics has. Over the longer barriers, Sarah Carli and teenager Matthew Hunt contest the 400m hurdles.
Glasgow introduces a mixed 4x400m relay to the Games for the first time. Two men, two women, one baton, and a format that has produced some of the most chaotic and thrilling finishes in the sport. Australia’s debutant quartet of Mia Gross, Jemma Pollard, Cooper Sherman and Luke van Ratingen will be in the thick of it on the final day.
Glasgow stages the biggest para-athletics program in Commonwealth Games history, sixteen medal events run as part of the main schedule rather than off to the side, and Australia’s team is loaded with intent.
Rhiannon Clarke is the one to watch. A silver medallist in 2018 and a bronze medallist in 2022 over the T38 sprints, she arrives with a simple plan. She wants to “turn my silver and bronze into two golds.” Jaydon Page carries the same fire into the T47 100m after taking silver in Birmingham, saying he will do “everything I can to turn that into gold in Glasgow.” And in fourteen-year-old Lexie Brown, selected for the T47 100m, Australia has one of its most exciting young prospects. “I’m really proud to be selected for my first Commonwealth Games,” she said.
There is a bittersweet note too. Angela Ballard was set to make history as the first para athlete to compete at five Commonwealth Games before a late injury forced her to withdraw. Her absence is a reminder of how fine the margins are, and of the standard set by athletes like Madison de Rozario, Australia’s most successful para athletics athlete at the Games with four golds, for this squad to chase.
On the track, the para running events span the T54 wheelchair races over 400m and 1500m, the T20 1500m, and the T38 sprints, integrated through the same sessions as everyone else. You will not have to go looking for them.
This guide is brought to you in partnership with Cocogen, the official hydration partner of RunDais.
If you are getting up at 4am to watch the mile come home, you are going to want something to reach for while you do it, and the fit here is almost too neat!
Cocogen is organic coconut water with a bit more to it. It comes with added electrolytes, magnesium or collagen depending on what you are after, it is never from concentrate, and there is nothing artificial in the bottle. Natural hydration, in other words, without the sugar hit of a legacy sports drink, and it works just as well at 4am in front of the track as it does after your own run later that day. Morning to night, as they put it.
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