Lana Sutton

The last big weekend of the summer sees Irish athletes compete at a trio of Continental Tour silver meetings in Brescia, Berlin and Bellinzona, a Continental Tour bronze meeting in Poland, sprint meetings in north and east London, and a jumps meeting in Bedford.

Two of the European Championship medallists will race for the first time since their Birmingham heroics, and others will hope to collect some valuable Road to Beijing ranking points as they wrap up their seasons.

Brescia

European 200m silver medallist Rhasidat Adeleke was originally announced for the 100m at Grand Prix Brescia in Italy on Sunday, which would have been her attempt at the distance since breaking the Irish record at the Irish National Championships in June 2024.

The final startlists, however, show her in the 200m instead, where her opposition will include Cambrea Sturgis (USA) and Favor Ofili (Nigeria), both who have sub 22-second personal bests.

Adeleke will race at least once more over 200m before the end of the season at the Athlos meeting in London on 16th September. It was announced on Friday that the second Athlos meeting scheduled for New York on 2nd October - where she was also due to race - has been cancelled.

Sophie O’Sullivan, is due to race over 800m, a distance over which she has broken new ground. She broke two minutes for the first time, and moved to third on the Irish all-time list, right before the European Championships.

Berlin

Three Irish athletes have made the startlist for ISTAF 2026 in Berlin, another Continental Tour Silver meeting, also on Sunday.

Andrew Coscoran will race a competitive men’s 1500m, where his opposition will include sub-3:30 athletes Cameron Myers, Oliver Hoare (both Australia) and Narve Nordas (Norway), the German record holder Robert Farken (best of 3:30.09 from earlier this year) and European 800m bronze medallist Mohamed Attaoui.

Coscoran’s Irish record stands at 3:30.42, and he ran 3:31.65 at the Rabat Diamond League in May, one of only two non-championship attempts he’s had at the distance this summer.

Sarah Lavin will continue to search for some form over the 100m Hurdles. At this point in the season, anything faster than her 13.07 season’s best will feel like a win.

Lauren Callaghan has been in scintillating long jump form in 2026, jumping personal bests indoors and out, exceeding 6 metres in every competition apart from her season opener in January, and exceeding 6.30m in 9 of the 12 competitions she’s taken part in. Sunday provides a level of competition that will help her reach the next level in the event.

Bellinzona

Sarah Healy, who has been dipping her toes in the 5000m this summer, got very close to her 1500m PB at the Diamond League in Silesia a week ago, and she’ll race over that distance again at Galà dei Castelli in Bellinzona on Sunday.

While Healy is the fastest in the field on paper, her opposition in the Swiss city includes European 5000m and 10000m champion Nadia Battocletti, who showed a swift turn of pace in winning those titles.

Bori Akinola is one of 16 entrants for the men’s 100m. After making the European semi-final, the UCD A.C. athlete may well be looking to improve his 10.19 PB from earlier this summer.

Bronze

Sophie Becker is among the entries for Memorial Zbigniewa Ludwichowskiego, a Continental Tour Bronze meeting in Olsztyn, Poland on Sunday. Like others, she will be racing for the first time since the European Championships, where she made the semi-final of the 400m. 

Britain

The final meeting of both big London sprint meetings – the BFTTA series at Lee Valley and the Stratford Speed series in Stratford – both take place this bank holiday weekend.

Marcus Lawler and Bori Akinola are the big Irish names entered for the BFTTA meeting on Saturday. Lawler is scheduled to race both the 100m and 200m, while Akinola, also entered for Bellinzona on Sunday (see above) and Stratford on Monday (see below). It was at this meeting last year that Israel Olatunde shattered the Irish 100m record.

Lawlor is also entered for both distances at Stratford Speed on Monday, and Akinola is again down for the100m. They will be joined by Mark Smyth (100m, 200m) and Paul Costelloe (100m, 200m) in the men's short sprints. Ciara Neville, Cliodhna Manning, Arlene Crossan and Lana Sutton are all entered for the women’s 200m, with Neville and Sutton also down for the 100m, Manning entered for the 400m, and Crossan among the 400m Hurdles entries.

Three Irish long jumpers are due to compete at the BIG on Tour Final in Bedford. National champion Sam Healy will compete in the men’s event, alongside Colm Bourke in only his second competition since tearing his ACL a few days after winning the National Indoor title in February 2025. Callaghan is entered in the women’s event, but it is unclear if this is in addition to the Berlin event on Sunday (see above).

Booked

Earlier this week, Coscoran, Healy and O’Sullivan (Road Mile) were named alongside Cathal Doyle (Road Mile), Brian Fay, Darragh McElhinney (5km), Peter Lynch, Hiko Tonosa and Barry Keane (Half Marathon) for the World Road Running Championships, which will be held in Copenhagen on 19th and 20th September.

Brussels and Budapest beckoning

Mark English, the only Irish athlete currently sitting in a qualification spot for the Diamond League Final on 4th and 5th September, is likely to skip that event to focus on the inaugural World Athletics Ultimate Championships the following weekend, for which he looks to have comfortably qualified. It is therefore possible that no Irish athletes will be competing in the Belgian capital.

At the time of writing, Coscoran has slipped outside the Ultimate Championships spots in the men’s 1500m, and though he has the opportunity to improve his score on Sunday, it looks like he may miss out by a spot of two. Sharlene Mawdsley is still within the quota spots for the 400m.

A win for Healy on Sunday in or under four minutes would move her within a couple of spots of qualifying. Racing the 200m rather than the 100m on Sunday brings Ultimates back into the equation for Adeleke. Because the fifth score making up her current Road to Ultimate ranking is relatively low, she would not even need to win on Sunday to grab one of the quota spots.

Tuesday is the final day of qualification, apart from Diamond League wild card spots, which will be decided after the final.

As the stars of Irish athletics make their final preparations for the European Athletics Championships, which start in Birmingham on Monday, numerous others will conclude their season at meetings in the UK and Ireland on Sunday.

A handful of sprinters will take to the blocks at the penultimate Stratford Speed meeting of the year in east London, while some middle distance athletes will compete at the British Milers Club Grand Prix at St Mary's on the other side of the British capital.

Champion clubs, and counties, will be decided at the National League final in Santry, where a handful of recently-crowned national champions will be in action.

Medal hopes will be high for the large Irish team, which will be in action in Birmingham from Monday to Sunday. 

Sunday's action

Sunday will be a busy day, with competitions in both Ireland and the UK, as Irish athletes look to end their seasons on a high, or do a final bit of tuning up before Birmingham.

The final British Milers Club Grand Prix takes place at St. Mary’s in west London. Sophie O’Sullivan, selected for the 1500m in Birmingham, will race the 800m where she will face opposition from France, New Zealand, Australia and the UK.

Callum Morgan, who raced the 5000m at the recent Commonwealth Games, will be joined by Cormac Dalton, Colin p Smith and Kevin McGrath in the men’s 1500m. Amy O’Donoghue is among the athletes entered in the women’s 1500.

Callum Hurley, who last week ran a PB of 1:47.68, is entered in the 800m, as is Andrew Thompson. Jamie Battle and Shay McEvoy are among the leading Irish contenders in the men’s 3000m.

The penultimate Stratford Speed Grand Prix of the summer could see some of the Birmingham relay contenders in action over the various sprint distances. Molly Scott, on the women’s 4x100m relay squad, is entered for the 100m, as is para-athletics star Orla Comerford. Cliodhna Manning, Jenna Breen, Michelle Duggan and Lana Sutton are entered for the 400m, while Comerford is also on the 200m entries.

Mark Smyth, a non-travelling reserve for the men’s 4x100m relay in Birmingham, is entered for both the 100m and 200m at the east London meeting, and could be joined over the shorter distance by Gabriel Kehinde, Michael Farrelly and Paul Costelloe, among others.

Dundrum South Dublin will be looking to retain their men’s and women’s Premier Division national league titles in Santry on Sunday. Division 1 and County league winners will also be decided in the final domestic competition of the year.

Startlists are not available at the time of writing, but it is expected that national champions Daena Kealy (High Jump) and Ruby Millet (Long Jump) will be competing for St Abban’s. Kate Joyce, who won her first Irish senior title last month, is expected to compete for DSD in the Javelin, while Birmingham-bound Sarah Leahy (100m) is named on the Killarney Valley team.

World U20 Championships

The World U20 Championships will conclude in Eugene late on Sunday night (Irish time). At the time of writing, Siún Quinn is the sole Irish athlete guaranteed to compete on the final day, having qualified for the 14-woman high jump final. Ellis McHugh, Ethan Dewhirst and Des O'Neill will race to join her when they go in the 400m Hurdles semi-finals in the early hours of Sunday morning (Saturday evening session).

Séamus Clarke, 5th in the 5000m racewalk, is the best Irish result so far, with Dubem Amah (200m) and Pia Langford (800m) making the semi-finals in their respective events. 

European Championship

Among the medal prospects at the European Athletics Championships in Birmingham are Kate O’Connor (Heptathlon), fresh from her recent Commonwealth Games win; Mark English, the fastest European this year, and World Championship fourth-placer Cian McPhillips in the 800m, and World 1500m finalists Andrew Coscoran and Sarah Healy, the latter who will also race over 5000m.

Bori Akinola (100m), Rhasidat Adeleke (200m), Sophie O’Sullivan (1500m), Nicola Tuthill (Hammer) and Fionnuala McCormack (Marathon) will also be looking for big performances.

Ireland will have teams in both women’s and men’s 4x100m and 4x400m relays, though the mixed relay failed to qualify to defend the title they won in Rome two years ago.

Several athletes could make their Irish senior debut in the relays, while Abbie Sheridan (3000m steeplechase) and David McGlynn (marathon) will gain their first senior vests in individual events.

Ciara Neville and Lauren Roy (100m), Jack Raftery (400m) and Eric Favors (shot put) will join English and McPhillips in a busy opening session from 10:30am on Monday, and there will be a steady stream of Irish interest across the week. Check out the TrackAthletes Irish-specific timetable for details a detailed breakdown of who is competing when.

The championship will be shown on RTÉ and RTÉ Player, with dedicated field-event streams on Eurovision Sport.

The opening Diamond League of the season in Shanghai, a Continental Tour Gold meeting in Tokyo, some Continental Tour Challenger meetings in Europe and a host of NCAA Division I Conference Championships, are just some of the events abroad with Irish interest this weekend.

Closer to home, the National 5km Championships will be decided in the Phoenix Park on Saturday, while the sprinters and field eventers will look for confidence-boosting performances at the May T&F Open in Tullamore on Sunday.

A handful of athletes will also be competing at events in the UK, including the British Milers Club meeting in Trafford, the Loughborough International, and the BFTTA sprint meeting in London.

2026 Diamond League kicks off in China

Though still early in season, the Shanghai/Keqiao Diamond League startlist boasts a number of top international stars, including Mondo Duplantis, Faith Kipyegon, Karsten Warholm and Jess Hull.

On the Men’s 800m startlist is Mark English, who will be opening his outdoor season. Mark had a good indoor campaign, improving both his Irish 600m and 800m indoor records, though not making the World Indoor final will have been a disappointment for English and his fans.

English has already secured the qualification standards for this summer’s European Championships and may well have an eye on Cian McPhillips’s outdoor record (1:42.15) as he builds towards this summer’s biggest event.

The event will be shown live on Virgin Media Two from 12 noon to 2pm on Saturday.

Continental Tour Gold

Staying in East Aisa, the Continental Tour Gold meeting in Tokyo features several Irish athletes with Sophie Becker (400m), Sophie O’Sullivan (1500m), Brian Fay and Laura Nicholson (both 3000m) all on the startlist at the time of writing.

Fay started 2026 with 16th place at the World Cross Country Championships in Tallahassee. After finishing 3rd in the 3000m at the Continental Tour Gold meeting in Melbourne at the end of March, he got in some speedwork over 1500m in Hiroshima two weeks ago, and ran 13:13.30 to win over 5000m at the Golden Games in Nobeoka on 4th May.

Nicholson, too, has been busy, with races in New Zealand, Australia and Japan, over a variety of distances, already this year. She knocked more than two seconds off her 800m PB in her most recent outing, and is the only Irish athlete to have run under 9 minutes for the 3000m, indoors or out, so far in 2026. She’ll be hoping to improve on the 8:59.74 PB she ran in Hobart at the end of February.

Becker opened her outdoor campaign by helping the Irish women’s 4x400m relay team qualify for the 2027 World Championships, before recording 52.36 at the Belfast Classic last Saturday. The 51.20 qualification standard for Birmingham will be within her sights in the coming weeks, though she’s likely to qualify by ranking without it.

O’Sullivan has races just once in 2026, a 1500m at the Melbourne meeting, but with the European standard already secured, she has plenty of time to return to full fitness for Birmingham in August.

Other Continental Tour meetings

Nicola Tuthill (Hammer) is among the senior entries for the two-day Halplus Werfertage throws meeting (Continental Tour Bronze) in Germany. Anna Gavigan is on the U23 Discus startlist, while Theo Hanlon is entered in U20 shot put.

Jack Raftery and Sean Doggett, who both raced as part of the mixed relay team at the World Relays in Botswana earlier this month, are due to compete at Meeting de Atlismo Toni Bonet (Continental Tour Challenger) in Ibiza on Saturday. Doggett had a breakthrough indoor season, running 46.99 and winning the national indoor title. Raftery raced at Belfast last weekend, where he ran 46.18.

Andrew Thompson is scheduled to race at the British Milers Club meeting in Trafford, Manchester (Continental Tour Challenger) on Saturday. Thompson, who ran 1:47.08 in Belfast last Saturday, has a personal best of 1:46.77 from 2025.

Domestic action

Matthew Callinan Keenan (Pole Vault), Sophie Meredith (Long Jump), Michaela Walsh (Shot Put), Conor Cusack and Grace Casey (Javelin) and Michael Healy (Discus) are among the field eventers entered for the National May T&F Open.

Among the men’s 400m hurdlers entries are Ethan Dewhirst and Fintan Dewhirst who have both started the season well. The former smashed his personal best and achieved a World U20 standard in April, while the latter was an impressive winner of the Intervarsity title before travelling to Botswana as part of the Irish mixed relay squad at the World Relays.

The women’s 400m hurdles race also has much strength in depth, with EYOF medallist Ellis McHugh among the entries. Saoirse Fitzgerald, who will step down to the 400m after achieving the World U20 standard over 800m earlier this month.

National senior and master champions will be crowned at the IrishRunner 5km in the Phoenix Park on Saturday. Preliminary entries suggest this could be a very competitive event.

Action in the UK

Daena Kealy (High Jump), Lauren Callaghan (Long Jump), Lucy McGlynn (400m Hurdles) and para-athlete Lana Sutton (ambulant 100m and 200m) are among the entries for the Loughborough International, while sprinters Colin Costelloe and Adam Murphy are entered for the 100m and 200m at the BFTTA Series 3 meeting in London on Sunday. It was in the final meeting of this series last year that Israel Olatunde set the current Irish 100m record of 10.08.

NCAA Division I Conference Championships

All the biggest NCAA Div I Conferences have their championships over the coming days, with dozens of Irish athletes set to compete. While not all athletes entered will take part, we should expect to see the majority of the Irish who have been ripping up the record books competing across the next few days.

Some of the standout performers so far this year have been Maeve O’Neill, who set a new Irish Indoor 800m record earlier in the year before making the semi-final of the World Indoor Championships, the new Irish 200m record holder Sean Aigboboh and Lauren Roy, who went number 2 all-time over both 60m (7.19) and 200m (22.89) during her indoor season.

Roy followed up her fine indoor season, which, like O’Neill, included a trip to the World Indoors in March, with a wind-aided 11.08 (+2.8) 100m. She has yet to secure a consideration standard for this summer’s Commonwealth Games, and will likely target those standards (11.30 for 100m and 23.15 for 200m) in the coming weeks.

Aigboboh, part of the record-breaking Irish 4x100m relay team last summer, could compete both with the relay and as an individual in Birmingham, having secured the qualification standard over 100m, and looking likely to be within quota over 200m.

Elizabeth Ndudi, the indoor and outdoor long-jump record holder, has had a mixed season so far, jumping 6.63, a new indoor mark, in her second competition of the year. Conference and Regional championships will provide an opportunity for her to bring that form outdoors.

Diarmuid O’Connor is another NCAA-based athlete to have broken a national senior record this year, as he twice added points to his own Indoor Heptathlon mark. O’Connor remains in third place on the Irish all-time list for the Decathlon, and will surely be looking to chase down Carlos O’Connell’s 38-year-old national record in upcoming competitions.

Siún Quinn, still an U20, last week added 5 centimetres to her high jump personal best, and will look to build on that over the remainder of the NCAA season ahead of the World U20 Championships in Eugene in July.

Seán Donoghue, now a three-time Penn Relay winner, Leevale pair Lucy-May Sleeman and Nicole Dinan, and distance runners Dean Casey and Anika Thompson are just some of the other athletes to watch out for in coming weeks, as are Roisin Treacy (3000m Steeplechase), Nathan Cremin (800m) and Heather Murphy (5000m, 10,000m), who have already won medals at their respective NCAA and NAIA Conference Championships.

You'll find a breakdown of which athletes to expect to see at each of the championships on the TrackAthletes NCAA Div I Conference page, where you'll also find links to live results and streams (where available).