Frequently Asked Questions and Responses to the 2026 Boston Marathon Cutoff Time Prediction

The BAA released the number of applicants for the 2026 Boston Marathon: 33,267. Here’s a revised prediction that takes this new data into account.

This evening, the registration period for the 2026 Boston Marathon comes to a close. After tracking data to project the likely cutoff time throughout the year, I published my final prediction earlier this week (5:30 to 6:00).

As usual, this prediction and others (like Joe Drake) caused a lot of discussion online. There were some common threads in many of the discussions, and I thought it would be helpful to bring those together here – both to offer answers for people who are curious and to serve as a record for when we look back and evaluate how things worked out.

If you have any other questions that haven’t been answered, feel free to comment below.

1. What if the qualifying times didn’t change at all?
2. If the old qualifying times were in effect, wouldn’t the cutoff just be 5 minutes higher than last year?
3. The cutoff time has never moved this quickly before, so I don’t believe it.
4. Are people really running this much faster?
5. Could the cutoff time reach 10 minutes?
6. Are previous conversion rates still applicable?
7. Is the 1,800 qualifiers per minute figure still accurate?
8. What if there are a lot of people right under the qualifying time?
9. Will a decline in international applicants impact the cutoff time?
10. Could the number of international applicants actually increase?
11. What does the future of the cutoff time look like?
12. How do we evaluate this prediction?

What If the Qualifying Times Didn’t Change At All?

A common response is disbelief. If the qualifying times were lowered and we still have a 5:30 to 6:00 cutoff, that implies that we would have a much higher cutoff time if the qualifying times did not change.

The simple fact is that if the qualifying times didn’t change, there would indeed be a much higher cutoff time. In the qualifying period for the 2025 Boston Marathon, there were about 65,500 qualifiers in my sample. As a result of the new qualifying times, that number declined to 61,500 this year.

If you applied the old qualifying times to this year’s pool of runners, that number would instead have increased to 75,000 – a 14.5% jump.

If you assume a similar increase in applicants, the number of applicants would have increased from 36,393 to ~42,000. That would have resulted in a cutoff time of 9-10 minutes (from the old qualifying times).

If the Old Qualifying Times Were In Effect, Wouldn’t the Cutoff Time Just Be 5 Minutes Higher?

The shift in qualifying times is not quite as simple as that.

The new qualifying times did not decrease by 5 minutes across the board. They decreased by 5 minutes for every age group under 60. Runners in the 60+ age groups – who make up over 10% of the field – are still qualifying under the old times.

So the new qualifying times didn’t exactly turn the clock back five minutes on the cutoff time. The net effect is probably closer to four minutes, give or take.

The Cutoff Time Has Never Moved This Quickly Before, So I Don’t Believe It

When you look back at the cutoff times over the years, it has tended to move in one or two minute increments. Things got marginally more competitive each year, and when new qualifying times were introduced they offered relief.

So why is this year different?

For one, they didn’t go as far as some people think with last year’s changes. The change in cutoff times didn’t fully eliminate the 6:51 cutoff from last year. It didn’t even lead to a net reduction of five minutes.

If the net impact of the new qualifying times was to reduce the cutoff by ~4 minutes, the new baseline is a cutoff time of ~2:30 to 3:00. So an actual cutoff time of 5:30 to 6:00 is only an increase of 3:00.

But the other piece of this equation is that the year to year change from last year’s qualifying period to this year’s qualifying period is unlikely any other. The closest comparison would be between the 2023 and 2024 Boston Marathons.

From 2000 (and before) through 2014, the sport went through a period of sustained growth. But over those fourteen years, the number of finishers at the 25 largest races in the United States only went up about 65% – less than 5% per year.

This year, the number of finishers is up close to 12%.

From 2015 to 2019, when the cutoff time was slowly growing, there was a net decline in the number of finishers. The sport was seeing a retrenchment in participation.

This year is very much unlike any year before COVID – so any conclusions you draw about a “normal” increase in the cutoff time from that time period of questionable validity.

Are People Really Running This Much Faster?

It’s a common misconception that more people meeting the qualifying times means that people are running faster.

In a sense, it’s true. More people are running faster. But it’s not because a larger percentage of people are running faster – it’s because there are more people running.

From 2015 to 2019, the cutoff time continued to grow. In this time period, the number of finishers across marathons also decreased slightly. So in this time period, it is a valid assumption – backed up by some data – that runners were actually getting faster. Especially at the end of that time period as super shoes started to proliferate.

But when you compare runners from this qualifying period to runners from last qualifying period, the percentages of runners hitting similar times only increases slightly. It would be true to say that runners are marginally faster – but that explains only a tiny bit of the increase in the number of qualifiers.

If you measured each pool of qualifiers against the older, 2020 qualifying times, the qualification rate increased from 13.2% to 13.6%. That increase is 3% – much smaller than the 12% increase in finishers.

Could the Cutoff Time Reach 10 Minutes?

If you’re asking about this year – it’s incredibly unlikely. Nothing is impossible, but that’s still a pretty sure bet.

Last year, there were 18,170 applicants with a buffer in excess of 10 minutes. Based on the modeling that I’ve done, there should be about 16,000 applicants at that point in the field this year.

Could that number be off slightly? Sure. But if there are 24,000 available spots, that projection would need to be miles off.

There are more than enough qualifiers out there with 10+ minute buffers to fill up the field. My sample included just over 32,000, and there are plenty more outside of North America and the races that I’ve tracked.

One of the key variables that could be off is the conversion rate – the percent of qualifiers that apply. If that number were 50% higher than last year – meaning 50% more qualifiers applied than last year – it’s possible. But that magnitude of change from one year to the next is pretty hard to fathom.

In the long term, though, it is possible that we reach that point. Over the next 2-3 years, a combination of growth (3-5% in finishers) and an increase in the conversion rate (because of growing demand for the Majors) could bring us to the point where the cutoff is 10 minutes below today’s BQs.

But that’s only a possible future – not a guaranteed one. And it’s almost certainly not a possible outcome for this year.

Are Previous Conversion Rates Still Applicable?

Someone posited that the recent increase in interest in the Majors – as evidenced by the growing number of Six and Seven Star Finishers, along with record numbers of applicants to the respective lotteries – could indicate the possibility of a higher than usual conversion rate. And if the projection is based on stale data, it would end up underestimating things.

It’s a good insight and a valid critique. But my response to that is that the projection is built on comparisons from last year to this year. In that short of a time period, it’s unlikely that the conversion rate has changed that much.

If the dashboard was built on an estimate of conversion rate from the 2015-2019 period, then this would be a much bigger concern.

Still, I think it’s worth pointing out that this is one reason why my gut tells me the outcome could be slightly higher than the projection. The difference from last year to this year is probably marginal, but the trajectory is upwards. So it’s much more likely that the projection underestimated things slightly than overestimated them.

Is the 1,800 Qualifiers Per Minute Figure Still Accurate?

The original cutoff time tracker bases its calculations on the assumption that one minute of cutoff time eliminates approximately 1,800 applicants. How do we know this is still true?

It’s true that if you looked back at the previous year (2024), those numbers looked a little different. In that year, there were about 2,000 runners per minute in the first bucket (0-5:29) and 1,500 runners per minute in the next bucket (5:30 to 10:00). If there really were 2,000 applicants per minute, the cutoff time would be closer to 5:00.

But that 1,800 number is based on last year. Across the full spectrum, from 0 to 10 minutes, the number of applicants per minute was consistently ~1,800. When you look at the number of qualifiers in this year’s qualifying period, there are a similar number of qualifiers in that same range of buffers compared to last year.

So I’m comfortable with the assumption that that distribution will be fairly similar this year.

What If There Are a Lot of People Right Under the Qualifying Time?

Some people assume that since the qualifying times are harder, there are a lot of people just barely making it. As a result, there should be a lot of people with small buffers and fewer people with larger buffers.

If there was a spike in the number of qualifiers at BQ-1 or BQ-2, that would distort the outcome. But when you look at the data, there’s absolutely no evidence for this. The distribution of qualifiers with 0-10 minute buffers in this qualifying period looks very similar to the distribution in the last qualifying period.

There is a more significant difference at the extreme end. The bulk of the reduction in the number of qualifiers comes from runners with a 20+ minute buffer.

But in any case, the dashboard that projects the number of applicants takes the distribution of buffers into account.

Will a Decline in International Applicants Impact the Cutoff Time?

Since early this year, there have been critics that have suggested that the number of international applicants will be severely curtailed this year. In part, this is due to the specific strain in American-Canadian relations, and in part this is due to general angst about American politics and immigration enforcement.

I took a closer look at the Canadian question here, and my analysis suggests that there will be little if any impact. But for the sake of argument, let’s assume that there is a significant decline in international participation this year.

In a typical year, about one third of runners come from outside the United States. If that rate is the same in the applicant pool, that’s about 12,000 international qualified applicants. If you reduce that number by 10% – a sizeable reduction – you’d eliminate about 1,200 applicants. That would result in a cutoff time of about 4:45 to 5:00.

If international participation dropped by 50% – which is not a realistic prediction at all – that would still yield about 29,000 applicants and a 2:00 to 2:30 cutoff time.

It is possible that there is a small decline in international participation. But if anything, it’ll have a marginal impact on the cutoff time.

Update: The number of applicants – 33,267 – is lower than expected. This could be consistent with a small decline in international participation, but we won’t know that for certain until we see the registrant list in the spring.

Could the Number of International Applicants Actually Increase?

The flip side of this question is whether the number of international applicants will actually increase.

When you look at the breakdown of finishers in the last few years, the number of American and Canadian runners has been on the decline. The number of overseas applicants has been on the rise.

In just the past two years, the number of overseas runners has increased by 50%. Go back to 2017 and there’s a smaller but sustained long term increase.

This suggests that overseas interest in Boston is increasing – rapidly. And the fact that there are a lot of overseas runners who have not historically been interested in Boston means that there’s a huge potential upside for the number of overseas applicants.

When I looked at the conversion rate of qualifiers to applicants, about 30-40% of qualifiers at North American races ended up applying to Boston. That number is between 5% and 10% for the large overseas races that I looked at.

In other words, there’s a huge untapped pool of qualifiers across the pond. If even a small share of them decide they want to run Boston this year, it could push the number of applicants even higher.

What Does the Future of the Cutoff Time Look Like?

I’m going to return to this question in more depth in a couple of weeks – once we see how this prediction plays out. But some smart runners are already thinking ahead to what the changes for the 2027 Boston Marathon might mean.

Two things have changed about registration. Boston introduced the downhill results index and they eliminated the double dipping period in early September.

My initial analysis of the downhill results index suggests it’ll have a minor impact – turning back the clock about 30 seconds or so on the cutoff time. The double dipping period is also going to have a small impact.

Let’s assume that we start with a baseline cutoff time of around 5:00 if everything else remains the same.

There are four potential futures:

1. Participation in races starts to decline and there are fewer finishers in the next qualifying period. The result would be a lower cutoff time, significantly below 5:00.
2. Participation starts to plateau, and there are about the same number of finishers next year. The result would be a cutoff time of around 5:00, maybe a little higher or lower.
3. Participation grows slowly but steadily – around 3% to 5%. The result would be a record number (or close to it) of applicants, and a 6-7 minute cutoff time.
4. Participation grows at the same rate it did this year – over 10% year over year. We’re looking at 39,000 to 40,000 applicants and a sky-high cutoff time (8-9 minutes).

It’s too early to make a real prediction, but I’d say #3 is the most likely, followed by #2. I think #4 is unlikely, but probably more likely than #1.

In short: until you hear otherwise, plan for BQ-6 or BQ-7 at your fall marathons.

How Do We Evaluate This Prediction?

On some level, that’s a silly question. Towards the end of the month, we’ll find out what the actual cutoff time is – and the prediction will be either right or wrong.

But there are a couple of unknowns indicated above and there are a couple of ways that this could go wrong. So I wanted to lay those out up front. When I come back to reflect on this in a couple of weeks, these are the things I’m going to be looking for.

I’d bucket things into six possible outcomes:

1. The best possible outcome: there are between 34,000 and 35,000 applicants and the cutoff time is between 5:30 and 6:00. This means the prediction was spot on and the methodology for projecting the cutoff time worked perfectly.
2. The next most likely outcome is that the predicted numbers are close to those ranges, but they fall just outside. In this case, the projection was mostly accurate, but there were some unknown factors that swayed the outcome. We may or may not be able to figure out what those factors were.
3. If the number of applicants is over 36,000 and the cutoff time ends up being higher than 6:15-6:30, this likely means that international interest in the race is continuing to surge.
4. If the number of applicants is over 36,000 but the cutoff time is still in the expected range, it probably means more qualifiers with a small buffer applied than were anticipated.
5. If the number of applicants is below 33,000 and the cutoff time is below 5:00, this likely means that there was actually a significant decline in international participation.
6. If the number of applicants is below 33,000 and the cutoff time is still in the expected range, it probably means that I scared off a lot of runners with a small buffer. Oops.

The data released by BAA when they announce the cutoff time will help inform some of this, and the actual entry list when it becomes available in the spring will also help inform what happened. But until then, here’s how I would think about the outcome – and how I plan on judging things when I reflect on them in a few weeks.