15/06/2026
2026 EVENT CANCELLED
The organisers regretfully announce that the 2026 Alton Bus Rally & Running Day planned for Sunday 19th July has been cancelled.
Although we were advised that building works were scheduled to take place at the college during the 2026 college summer holidays, the locations of work and the external space needed to carry out these works have only recently been advised and they are significantly larger than anticipated which will severely restrict bus movements. The areas affected by these works are critical for the event to operate and ultimately means less space for exhibits and bus services being drastically cut back. With only a handful of vehicles running in service there would be less variety of vehicles and routes operating as well as insufficient capacity for the number of visitors.
We feel we would not be able to provide a safe event to the standard or quality that we strive to achieve and that people have come to expect and therefore we have had to make the difficult decision to cancel the event. As you can imagine this has been an agonising decision to make and one which has not been taken lightly.
We would like to thank everyone who has entered a vehicle or stall and those who were planning to visit the event and we apologise for any inconvenience the cancellation may cause you.
We will publicise the cancellation as widely as possible and we will contact everyone who has entered a vehicle or stall to the event. All stall holders that have paid for a pitch at the event will receive a full refund.
Right now our priority is to get the cancellation message out, contact entrants and refund stall holders. Once the dust has settled we will look at options for next year’s event and a further announcement will be made later in the year in relation to this.
We would like to point out that the issues that caused the event to be moved from Anstey Park all still prevail, so returning to Anstey Park is not an option and there is no other suitable alternative site in Alton big enough for the event. In any case there is now insufficient time to move the event to another site, it took the team 15 months of work and planning to relocate the event from Anstey Park to Alton College.
The team are truly sorry for all those that were looking forward to our event, but we hope that you will all understand and support our decision.
Claire & the Alton Bus Rally & Running Day Organising Team
15/06/2026
