Registration for the 2027 Boston Marathon opens today, Monday, September 14, 2026, at 10 a.m. ET, with two rules in force for the first time: a time penalty for qualifying races run on steep downhill courses, and a random draw that will hand roughly 1,000 entries to runners who miss the cut-off.
The window runs five days and closes at 5 p.m. ET on Friday, Sept. 18. Applying at one minute past opening buys nothing. The Boston Athletic Association collects the whole week’s applications, verifies the times, and only then ranks everyone by how far under their age and gender standard they ran. Qualifying times had to come from a certified race held on or after Sept. 13, 2025, and notifications go out in early October.
The 2027 Boston Marathon Qualifying Times
These are the same standards used for the 2026 race, when the B.A.A. took five minutes off every age group from 18 to 59.
| Age group | Men | Women | Non-binary |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18-34 | 2:55:00 | 3:25:00 | 3:25:00 |
| 35-39 | 3:00:00 | 3:30:00 | 3:30:00 |
| 40-44 | 3:05:00 | 3:35:00 | 3:35:00 |
| 45-49 | 3:15:00 | 3:45:00 | 3:45:00 |
| 50-54 | 3:20:00 | 3:50:00 | 3:50:00 |
| 55-59 | 3:30:00 | 4:00:00 | 4:00:00 |
| 60-64 | 3:50:00 | 4:20:00 | 4:20:00 |
| 65-69 | 4:05:00 | 4:35:00 | 4:35:00 |
| 70-74 | 4:20:00 | 4:50:00 | 4:50:00 |
| 75-79 | 4:35:00 | 5:05:00 | 5:05:00 |
| 80+ | 4:50:00 | 5:20:00 | 5:20:00 |
Hitting the standard has never been the same thing as getting in. It earns an application, nothing more.
Where the Time Was Run Now Counts
A qualifying time set on a course that drops between 1,500 and 2,999 feet from start to finish now has five minutes added to it before the ranking, and a drop of 3,000 to 5,999 ft costs 10 minutes. Past 6,000 ft, the course cannot be used for Boston at all. The B.A.A. looked at results from 2022 onward and concluded that runners coming off the steepest courses were arriving with an edge the rest of the field did not have.
There is no list of penalized races to check against. The adjustment is applied at the point a time is submitted, and the B.A.A. directs athletes to World Athletics, USA Track & Field, or the race’s own site for certification and elevation data. Marathon Handbook counted 27 marathons that fall inside the thresholds, St. George and several REVEL events among them.
The Draw for 1,000 Spots
Working in the other direction is the Boston Qualifier Selection, which the B.A.A. announced in July. Once the fastest applicants in each age and gender group have filled the field and the cut-off is set, about 1,000 more names will be pulled at random from everyone who beat their standard but landed below that line. A qualifier who misses by four seconds is no longer simply out.
“The Boston Marathon annually welcomes the highest performing athletes, and we are internationally known for our qualifying standards,” B.A.A. president and CEO Jack Fleming said. “With the increasingly fast times in our sport, our random Boston Qualifier Selection gives all those who have met the standard for their age group a chance to run Boston.”
How good those odds are depends on how many people apply this week, a number nobody has until Friday evening.
Boston Marathon Cut-Off Times by Year
The cut-off decides most applications and does not exist until the applications are in. Last year it came out at 4:34 under the standard: of the 33,249 who applied, 24,362 were accepted and 8,887 were turned away.
The B.A.A.’s record of the past nine registrations, with the number of qualified applicants rejected each year:
- 2026: 4:34 (8,887 rejected)
- 2025: 6:51 (12,324)
- 2024: 5:29 (11,039)
- 2023: no cut-off (0)
- 2022: no cut-off (0)
- 2021: 7:47 (9,215)
- 2020: 1:39 (3,161)
- 2019: 4:52 (7,248)
- 2018: 3:23 (5,062)
Two of those years took everyone who qualified and applied, which is worth remembering before treating any single year’s number as the target. The standards themselves have moved across that stretch too, so a 4:34 buffer in 2026 asked more of a runner than a 4:52 did in 2019.
Anyone still working out what they need can read through how the qualifying process works before Friday. The 131st Boston Marathon is set for Monday, April 19, 2027, and the qualifying window for 2028 opens Saturday, Sept. 19, the morning after this one shuts.
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