These are the official results of the athletics competition at the 1986 Goodwill Games which took place between July 5 and 9, 1986, at the Moscow Olympic Stadium in Moscow, Soviet Union.^[1]

Most of the running events had so many entrants that several heats had to be held with the combined results deciding on the medals (the sole exception was women's 100 metres hurdles where both heats and the final were held). This caused some controversy as the Soviets entered some of their better athletes in a theoretically weaker heat, possibly to avoid direct competition with the best rivals. This proved effective in the men's 1500 metres where Pavel Yakovlev ran in the first heat virtually unobstructed and paced by his teammate and eventually recorded a better time than the winner of the more tactical second heat featuring most of the favorites.