The Boston Marathon Just Gave Rejected Qualifiers A Second Chance With A New Lottery

For years, the cruelest phrase in the sport has been “I qualified for Boston, but I didn’t get in.” The Boston Athletic Association just did something about it. In its registration announcement for the 131st Boston Marathon on April 19, 2027, the B.A.A. unveiled a new random-selection lottery that will give a second path in to qualifiers who beat the standard but come up short of the cutoff.

What’s New: The Boston Qualifier Selection

Here’s how it will work. After qualifier registration closes, the B.A.A. will verify times and rank applicants by how far they beat their standard. The fastest are accepted, and the slowest accepted time sets the cutoff, exactly as in recent years. But new for 2027, everyone who beat their standard yet fell outside that cutoff is then entered into a random draw for roughly 1,000 additional spots.

That matters because the cutoff has become punishing. For 2026, nearly 9,000 qualifiers were rejected despite hitting their times, with the effective cutoff at a record 4:34 under the standard. A BQ has stopped guaranteeing anything. The lottery won’t fix that entirely, but it hands about a thousand runners a year a genuine reward for hitting a mark that otherwise meant nothing.

“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,” said B.A.A. President and CEO Jack Fleming.

The Key Dates

• Qualifier registration: September 14–18, 2026, through the B.A.A.’s Athletes’ Village platform. It is not first-come, first-served; you have the full window to apply.
• Notifications: all applicants told yes or no by early October 2026.
• 2028 qualifying window: opens September 19, 2026, the day after 2027 registration week closes, and runs through registration week in September 2027.

Also New: A Crackdown On Downhill Courses

Buried in the announcement is a change fast runners will care about. For the first time, September’s registration will apply time-index adjustments to qualifying times run on steeply downhill courses, specifically those with a net elevation drop greater than 1,500 feet (457.2 meters). In plain terms, if you BQ’d on one of the ultra-fast downhill point-to-point races that have proliferated in recent years, your time may be adjusted upward. It’s the B.A.A. moving to protect the integrity of the standard as more runners chase soft courses for an easier qualifier.

The 2028 standards, by the way, are unchanged from 2027, though those downhill time indexes could shift before the 2028 registration period.

So, if you’ve got a Boston qualifier that’s comfortably under the standard, nothing changes: register in September and you’re very likely in. If your BQ is tight, the margin that used to leave you sweating the cutoff now also buys you a lottery ticket. And if you’re planning your qualifying attempt, the smart target is still to beat the standard by several minutes, and to do it on a legitimate course.