Qualifier registration for the 131st Boston Marathon opens on Monday 14 September and closes at 5pm Eastern on Friday 18 September, giving runners who have hit a qualifying standard 11 days to make sure their times are verified and their Athletes' Village accounts are in order. The race itself takes place on Monday 19 April 2027. As in recent years, registration is not first-come, first-served: every application received during the window is treated equally, and the field is then assembled by ranking athletes on how far they beat their age-group standard.
The significant change for 2027 is the introduction of a Boston Qualifier Selection, a random draw reserved for applicants whose qualifying time was not fast enough to clear the cut-off. The Boston Athletic Association says roughly 1,000 places will be allocated this way, and that eligible runners will be entered automatically without any further action. Jack Fleming, the B.A.A.'s president and chief executive, framed the move as a response to the increasingly fast times in the sport, arguing that every athlete who has met the standard for their age group deserves a chance to run.
The cut-off itself remains unknown until the applications are counted. In recent editions runners have needed to beat their standard by several minutes to be accepted, and the B.A.A. has been clear that the number of accepted athletes will be consistent with recent years, which means the new draw does not enlarge the field so much as reshuffle who fills part of it. Applicants will hear whether they have been accepted by early October.
This September's window is also the first to apply the B.A.A.'s time index adjustments for downhill courses. Any qualifying time run on a course with a net elevation drop greater than 1,500 feet will have a set number of minutes added before it is compared with the standard, which is likely to affect runners who targeted point-to-point races in the mountain west specifically for a Boston qualifier. The adjustments for the 2028 cycle are described as subject to change.
For those who do not make it this time, the 2028 qualifying window opens on Saturday 19 September, the day after registration closes, and runs until registration week in September 2027. The 2028 standards are the same as those used for 2027. With Berlin on 27 September, Chicago on 11 October and New York on 1 November all inside the new window, the autumn majors will double as the first opportunities to chase a place in the 2028 race.