Mark your calendars: the Boston Athletic Association (BAA) has announced the registration dates for the 2025 Boston Marathon. Although race day is still 10 months away, registration will open on September 9, 2024 at 10 a.m. ET, and close on September 13, 2024, at 5 p.m. ET.
The race is set to take place on Monday, April 21, 2025, with a field size of around 30,000 participants.
“We’re eager to welcome runners from across the nation and around the world for the 129th running of the Boston Marathon presented by Bank of America,” said Jack Fleming, President and CEO of the B.A.A. “History was made at the 2024 race on Patriots’ Day, with a course record set and groundbreaking fundraising totals achieved. We’ll look to build upon these milestones in April 2025 and celebrate the newest group of Boston Marathoners from Hopkinton to Boston. September’s registration is the first step towards reaching the starting line.”
Any athlete who has achieved a qualifying time will be able to submit a registration application online during the window via the BAA’s online platform, cleverly dubbed “Athletes’ Village.”
Here’s a handy article on everything you need to know about Boston Marathon qualification times, including paces for each age group:
It is important to understand that achieving a qualification time and submitting a registration application does not guarantee entry into the Boston Marathon.
Here’s a link to the BAA’s page for the 129th Boston Marathon.
The BAA ranks applicants by sex and age group, and if the number of applicants surpasses the number of enters the organization has earmarked for the race, those with the fastest times in their respective age group will be selected.
That’s right. As much as it sucks, running a qualifying time is only half the battle, as every year, there is also a cutoff time, which is calculated after the BAA receives all the applications and closes the window on Sept. 13, (at 5 p.m. ET, and not 11:59 p.m. ET, remember). The cutoff time for the 2024 Boston Marathon was 5:29, meaning your qualification time had to be at least 5 minutes and 29 seconds faster than the listed Boston qualification time.
Also worth keeping in mind is that Boston typically allocates several thousand bibs for charity entries, corporate partners and influencers. The 2024 edition of the race was announced as a 30,000 person field, but ballooned out to over 33,000 entrants in total. But only about 22,000 of those in the race gained entry through the qualification process.
So mark your calendar and get to the start line of your qualification race, because time will run out quicker than you think.
