Will Movement 26.2 Actually Work? What the Evidence Says

Will Movement 26.2 actually work? The honest answer is yes, for the people it reaches, and for as long as the rewards keep coming. Every walking-rewards scheme with real research behind it has moved people's step counts up, in some cases by a lot. The harder question is whether Movement 26.2 can reach Britain's least active people. And whether the walking habit it builds outlasts the points once they run out.

This is our read on the wider evidence for reward-based walking schemes, not a news update. For the always-current facts on what's confirmed about Movement 26.2 itself, our Movement 26.2 guide is the page we keep updated.

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What is the NHS's Movement 26.2 walking rewards scheme?

Movement 26.2 is an NHS-backed challenge. It asks people to walk 26.2 miles, a marathon, every month. In return, you earn rewards through what's being called an NHS Points Scheme. Sir Brendan Foster's Great Run Company built it, alongside Sir Keith Mills, the creator of the Air Miles scheme.^[1] The scheme sits inside the government's wider 10 Year Health Plan for England.^[2]

Walking 26.2 miles a month works out to roughly 20 to 30 minutes a day, and the pace is flexible. Only the monthly total counts.^[2] It's free to join and due to launch by January 2027.^[2] Rewards start as digital badges and progress tracking. They later move to vouchers, discounts and deals with retailers.^[3]

As of this post, there's no official Movement 26.2 page, no sign-up process, and no confirmed retail partners.^[2] We keep a fuller, always-current breakdown on our Movement 26.2 guide. What the rewards might look like once they're confirmed is covered on our rewards page.

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Do digital rewards get people walking more? What three studies found

Yes. In every well-studied reward scheme we could find, people walked more once the rewards started. But none of these are randomised trials. That's the type of study that splits people randomly into a rewards group and a no-rewards group. It helps rule out other explanations. That's a real limit on how sure we can be that rewards alone caused the change. People who sign up for a walking challenge are often a bit more motivated than average to begin with. That could explain some of the extra steps too.

Programme	What happened	Study design
Singapore's National Steps Challenge	Daily steps rose by 1,437 on average during the challenge, then drifted back down once people's personal step goals ended[4]	411,528 adults, large study, no random assignment
Canada's Carrot Rewards app	Daily steps rose by 116 on average, but by 874 among people who were inactive at the start[5]	32,229 adults, before-and-after comparison, no separate comparison group
UK's Vitality Active Rewards	Active days per year rose 56% overall. Up 554% among the least active members, but just 17% among members who were already active[6]	11,881 members, before-and-after comparison across years

Look at the middle column and the same story repeats three times. Whoever gained the most, gained it from a low starting point. People doing the least beforehand responded best to the rewards, by a wide margin, every single time. That's real reason for optimism about a scheme built for the UK's least active adults. The catch is getting them to sign up in the first place.

Want to see what 26.2 miles a month looks like at your own pace? Try our walking calculator.

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Will Movement 26.2 reach Britain's least active people?

That's the open question, and it's the one an independent academic raised within weeks of the scheme's announcement. Rewards for higher step counts might do little for people who can't easily walk more in the first place, whatever's on offer.

Dr Pooya Soltani is a senior lecturer in digital health and society at the University of Salford. On 28 July 2026, he published one of the first named academic critiques of the NHS's walking challenge. At the time, it was still widely known as the "Marathon a Month" scheme.^[7] His point wasn't that walking is bad for you. It's that offering rewards for step counts may not reach people facing real, practical barriers to moving more, including:

• Disability
• Caring responsibilities
• Unsafe streets
• Long working hours
• Poor transport links^[7]

As Soltani put it, "the more important question is potentially being missed though: is it just lack of motivation that stops people from exercising enough?"^[7] For a lot of the least active people, the answer is no. No number of points fixes a broken pavement, a 12-hour shift, or nobody to watch the kids while you walk.

There's research backing that concern up more broadly. A 2018 umbrella review of 17 systematic reviews looked at physical activity programmes. It notes that population-wide public health strategies "can be differentially effective between socioeconomic groups and even increase inequalities."^[8] The authors also point out that programmes tend to work less well for disadvantaged groups. That's especially true when a programme isn't designed around the specific barriers those groups face.^[8] A one-size-fits-all rewards scheme risks doing the most for people who were already moving. And the least for the people it says it's aimed at.

The stakes are real. Physical inactivity is linked to around 1 in 6 deaths in the UK. It also costs the NHS an estimated £0.9 billion a year.^[9] The least active are exactly the people Movement 26.2 says it wants to reach.

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So will Movement 26.2 actually work?

It can work, based on how every comparable scheme has performed so far. But "work" has to mean two different things here. Movement 26.2 needs to reach the people currently doing the least. And it needs to help them keep walking once the points fade into the background.

On reach, Soltani's critique is the one to take seriously. If sign-up and app-based tracking end up being the main route in, that's a problem. The people facing the steepest structural barriers to moving more may never engage with the scheme at all. That's true whatever it eventually offers.^[7]

On lasting effects, Singapore's data is the clearest warning. A gain of 1,437 steps a day is a good result, but it faded once people's personal step pledges ended.^[4] If Movement 26.2's rewards ever taper off, the walking habit needs somewhere else to live besides the points balance. The same goes if the novelty wears thin, the way it tends to with most reward apps.

Neither problem is a reason to write the scheme off before it's even launched. Every study here shows real behaviour change. And the group needing it most, the least active, responded best across the board. It's a genuinely promising design. Whether it delivers depends on details we don't have yet. Things like how sign-up works, who it's marketed to, and what happens to your walking once the rewards themselves stop.

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Where Motion fits alongside Movement 26.2

The research above points to one practical lesson. Reward systems help most when you pair them with something that keeps the habit going once the novelty fades. That's the design problem Motion has been working on for years, well before the NHS ever announced Movement 26.2.

Motion is a free, independent walking and fitness app. It has no affiliation with the NHS or Movement 26.2, and it isn't an official or endorsed app for the scheme. What it offers instead is a habit-first design rather than a points-first one.

Motion's adaptive goals look at your real activity. They set a daily target from where you actually are, not a fixed marathon-length number everyone starts on the same day in January. Instead of a streak you can lose on one bad day, Motion uses something different. It pairs your activity with an evolveable Motmot, a virtual pet that grows as you move. It keeps the progress you've already built through an off day, rather than resetting it to zero.

We watch this space closely because it's what we build. Among Motion members, people have logged more than 4 million activities and completed close to half a million personal goals so far. That's not proof rewards work on their own. Our numbers can't tell you that. But it's a big part of why we've built Motion around habits that survive a missed day, rather than punish one.

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The bottom line on Movement 26.2

Movement 26.2 has good odds of moving the needle on how much the UK walks. That's especially true among people doing very little right now. Whether it changes anything long-term depends on two things. Whether it reaches the people facing real barriers to walking. And whether the habit outlasts the points scheme once the novelty settles.

If you'd rather get a head start on the walking habit itself, you don't need to wait for sign-up details that haven't landed yet. Our beginner's guide to Movement 26.2 walks through a gradual way to build up to 26.2 miles a month before January. Our earlier piece on why waiting doesn't make sense explains why starting now is worth it.

We'll keep updating our Movement 26.2 guide the day anything new is confirmed. Whatever your starting point is right now is a fine place to start today.

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