The 2027 Boston Marathon Qualifier Field by the Numbers

Getting into the 2027 Boston Marathon on time took a qualifying time 5:17 under standard. For anyone under 60, the standard itself is five minutes quicker than it was two years ago, which puts the real bar at about 10:17 under the qualifying times that applied as recently as the 2025 race. Runners 60 and over kept their old standards, so for them it is 5:17 flat.

The Boston Athletic Association started sending out decisions on Tuesday, when it accepted a record 25,630 qualifiers for April 19, including 1,000 picked in its first random draw, as MH reported. The B.A.A. publishes a fresh set of registration statistics every year, and set side by side with the last four cycles they show how much has changed since 2023, the last year everyone who qualified got in.

Applications, Acceptances and the Cutoff

Race year	Applications	Accepted on time	Not accepted	Accepted (%)	Cutoff
2023	23,267	23,267	0	100.0	0:00
2024	33,058	22,019	11,039	66.6	5:29
2025	36,393	24,069	12,324	66.1	6:51
2026	33,249	24,362	8,887	73.3	4:34
2027	33,649	24,630	8,019	73.2	5:17

2027 excludes the 1,000 runners picked in the Boston Qualifier Selection. With them, 76.2 percent of applicants got in.

Applications jumped by almost 10,000 between 2023 and 2024 and peaked at 36,393 for 2025, when the cutoff hit 6:51. The B.A.A. used that registration update to announce it was tightening the standards by five minutes for runners under 60, and the next cycle drew 3,144 fewer applications, a drop of 8.6 percent. This year’s total crept back up by just 400.

The number accepted on time has gone up every year since 2024, to 24,630 this time, which is why the B.A.A. could call this a record field even before adding the draw. The acceptance rate barely moved from 2026, though, because applications rose alongside it.

Boston Marathon Cutoff Times Since 2012

Race year	Field size	Cutoff	Qualifiers not accepted
2012	27,000	1:14	3,228
2014	36,000	1:38	2,976
2015	30,000	1:02	1,947
2016	30,000	2:28	4,562
2017	30,000	2:09	2,957
2018	30,000	3:23	5,062
2019	30,000	4:52	7,248
2020	31,500	1:39	3,161
2021	20,000	7:47	9,215
2022	30,000	0:00	0
2023	30,000	0:00	0
2024	30,000	5:29	11,039
2025	30,000	6:51	12,324
2026	30,000	4:34	8,887
2027	30,000	5:17	8,019

Since 2012, only the reduced 20,000-runner field of 2021 and the 2024 and 2025 races have needed a bigger margin than this year, going by the B.A.A.’s cutoff history. In the years the B.A.A. lists before 2019, the biggest was 3:23. For runners under 60, the last two cycles aren’t really comparable with the ones before them, since the 4:34 and the 5:17 were both measured against the faster standards.

How Far Under Standard the Field Ran

Race year	20 minutes or more	10:00 to 19:59	Cutoff to 9:59
2024	6,182 (28.1%)	8,858 (40.2%)	6,979 (31.7%)
2025	6,971 (29.0%)	11,199 (46.6%)	5,873 (24.4%)
2026	5,397 (22.2%)	8,961 (36.8%)	10,004 (41.1%)

The B.A.A. has not released this breakdown for 2027. The last band starts at each year’s cutoff.

The tighter standards show up plainly here. In the first cycle under them, the share of accepted runners who beat their time by 20 minutes or more fell from 29.0 percent to 22.2 percent, and 41.1 percent of the field got in with less than 10 minutes to spare.

The Most Popular Qualifying Races

Rank	2025 field	2026 field	2027 field
1	Chicago 2023 (2,584)	Boston 2025 (2,981)	Boston 2026 (4,448)
2	Boston 2024 (1,822)	Chicago 2024 (1,804)	Chicago 2025 (2,043)
3	London 2024 (1,101)	Berlin 2024 (1,127)	New York City 2025 (826)
4	Berlin 2023 (809)	New York City 2024 (832)	CIM 2025 (812)
5	CIM 2023 (749)	CIM 2024 (675)	London 2026 (610)

Runners using a time from the previous year’s Boston made up 7.6 percent of the on-time field for 2025, 12.2 percent for 2026 and 18.1 percent this year, close to one in five. The 2026 race had a lot to do with it: according to FindMyMarathon’s analysis, a start in the low 40s and a tailwind for most of the course produced a record 15,527 qualifying times, 53.5 percent of all finishers, up from 12,802 the year before. About 28 percent of those qualifiers have now been accepted for 2027 on time.

Chicago and the California International Marathon are the only races besides Boston to make the top five in all three years, and CIM is the only one of them that isn’t a major. Berlin dropped out this time after placing third last year.

Who Is in the Field

Race year	Men	Women	Non-binary	Women (%)	First-timers (%)	Countries	Mass. residents	Oldest
2023	13,315	9,930	22	42.7	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
2024	12,535	9,440	44	42.9	11,391 (51.7)	127	1,222	82
2025	13,740	10,260	69	42.6	11,326 (47.1)	118	1,286	83
2026	13,823	10,429	110	42.8	10,710 (44.0)	120	1,373	83
2027	13,898	10,641	91	43.2	10,745 (43.6)	120	1,498	84

On-time qualifiers only. First-timer counts are B.A.A. estimates.

Women make up 43.2 percent of this year’s on-time qualifiers, the highest share in the five cycles, though it has stayed between 42.6 and 43.2 percent the whole time. The non-binary count fell for the first time, from 110 to 91. First-timers have gone the other way: just over half the field in 2024 was new to Boston, and that share has slipped every year since, to 43.6 percent. The Massachusetts contingent has grown each year, and the oldest accepted runner is now 84.

This year’s figure of 849 runners accepted through the B.A.A. Running Club or with 10 or more consecutive Bostons isn’t directly comparable with earlier years, which counted the consecutive finishers alone (624 in 2023, 719 in 2026).

For the 9,019 applicants who beat their standard but missed 5:17, the new draw gave each about an 11 percent chance of a place. The qualifying window for 2028 opened on Sept. 19, with the same standards as this year and downhill adjustments that the B.A.A. has said it may revise before registration.