What Do the Results of the 2025 Boston Marathon Mean for the 2026 Cutoff?

Yesterday was a huge day in Boston.

Not only did the elites lay down some blazing fast times – Sharon Lokedi and the top three women all broke the previous course record, while John Korir now holds the third fastest time in Boston history and Conner Mantz narrowly missed becoming the fastest American ever – but the masses did, too.

I’ll be working on a more in depth analysis of the data from the race later in the week – with some insights into how fast the field was and how it compares to previous years.

For now, though, the most pressing question is: what does this mean for the cutoff time for the 2026 Boston Marathon?

Just How Fast Were the Runners at This Year’s Boston Marathon?

First, for a little context, let’s take a glimpse at how fast the mass field was. And it was fast.

I’ll keep it simple for today, and we’ll just look at the number of men who finished sub-3:00 and the number of women who finished sub-3:30.

In the chart below, the bars show the absolute number of finishers (men on the left, women on the right) who met those benchmark times. The lines show the percent of that group that met the benchmark.

Prior to this year, 2023 was the high water mark. There were just 3,900 men sub-3:00 and 3,200 women sub-3:30. The numbers dipped last year, due to the weather.

This year, they surged back up beyond the 2023 levels. Almost 4,300 men went sub-3:00 and 3,900 women went sub-3:30. The percent of each group also rose slightly – to 26.6% of men and 31.7% of women.

Although these numbers are huge, this is a good time to point out that the 2024 Valencia Marathon still had more men go sub-3:00. The speed of that field is mind boggling – especially because it doesn’t require any kind of time qualification to enter.

To some extent, the increase in these numbers should be expected. This year’s field required a 6:51 cutoff to earn entry, and the 2023 race had no cutoff. So the runners selected into the race were, by definition, faster.

This field was also slightly younger. In 2023, 38% of the field was under 35 and last year that number was 37%. This year, the share of under 35 runners rose to 39%.

But if the field at the Boston Marathon represented the fastest runners in the world – this is a sign that runners are getting faster. Or, perhaps more precisely, that there are more fast runners out there.

And the old benchmarks – like 3:00 / 3:30 – are no longer as elusive as they used to be.

How Many Runners Met Their New Qualifying Times?

For the purposes of understanding how this impacts the cutoff time, though, the more important question is – how many runners met their qualifying time? And how does that compare to last year?

Here are the topline numbers: 12,801 met their new qualifying times this year compared to 9,841 last year. That’s a net increase of 2,960 qualifiers after accounting for the stricter qualifying times.

There have been some races in my sample that saw a net increase in qualifiers. But none of them are even close to this magnitude.

In part, this year to year swing is due to the weather conditions at last year’s race. Last year had one of the lowest numbers of runners re-qualifying in recent years.

In part, this is also due to the fact that there were more qualified runners in this year’s race. In recent years, ~22,000 applicants were accepted on time. This year, 24,000 runners were.

Add in the fact that this year’s field had a 6:51 cutoff required for entry, and it’s not that surprising that a large number of runners re-qualified. Even with tougher standards.

Still, the sheer size of that difference was surprising to me.

For historical context, here’s the number (bars) and percent (line) of runners who re-qualified at Boston in the last ten years. The calculations are all based on the appropriate qualifying times for the following Boston Marathon – which changed in 2012, 2020, and 2025.

In terms of an absolute number, this year’s 12,801 was the second highest in recent history. The only year with more was 2023 (13,759). Coincidentally, that year also culminated in a high (5:31) cutoff for the following year’s Boston.

In terms of a percent, only 2023 and 2015 had a higher share of their runners re-qualify. The numbers are slightly different here, because this year’s race was larger – ~32k runners instead of 30k, and 28k finishers compared to 26k.

Regardless, there were a lot of re-qualifiers at this year’s Boston Marathon.

But How Much Does This Really Matter?

On its face, this is bad news if you were hoping for a lower cutoff time for Boston.

The projected cutoff time in the Boston Marathon Cutoff Time Tracker is based on a pretty simple (and tested) assumption – that the number of applicants is directly related to the number of qualifiers, so as the number of qualifiers goes up or down relative to last year … so will the number of applicants. That, in turn, determines the required cutoff.

But there is some nuance to that – which will ultimately reduce the impact of any single race.

Some runners run more than one race per year. And if you’re mainly concerned with people trying to qualify for Boston, I’d guess that many of them run more than one race per year. But you only need one qualifying time to actually make it in.

Last year, when the number of re-qualifiers at Boston was so low, some people took that as an indication that there would be a lower cutoff time. Obviously, that didn’t work out, and I explained some of the factors here.

But in short, some (many?) of the people who missed their qualifying times at the 2024 Boston Marathon notched another qualifying time at a different race. That muted the impact of that one single race.

Likewise, this year’s Boston has a huge number of qualifiers. But some (many?) of those qualifiers may already have a qualifying time in the bank from the fall.

Right now, the data in the dashboard includes all finishers across the races in the sample. So a single runner may be represented more than once.

Until now, this hasn’t really mattered because the number of people running more than one race within the same season is very low. And in general, this doesn’t matter a whole lot anyway, because the methodology is applied the same to both last year’s qualifying period and this year’s qualifying period.

But it represents one area of uncertainty, and removing duplicate results from the dataset will give us a more certain picture of what things look like. At the end of the month – after London – I’ll be updating the dashboard to include an option to de-duplicate the results.

The result of this will likely be that the projected cutoff time comes back down to earth a little bit. But … I wouldn’t bank on it coming back down below 5:00.

So What Do This Year’s Boston Results Mean For Next Year’s Cutoff?

At the end of the day, if you want to look at one single event and use that as a barometer – the results of this year’s Boston is the most important single day in the qualifying period.

Over 12,000 runners met their qualifying times for next year. Boston is typically the largest source of applicants for the next year’s Boston, and it looks like that will hold true in 2026.

This definitely points towards a higher cutoff than you might have expected a week ago. I anticipated there being an increase this year relative to last year, but frankly I did not expect it to be this large.

But don’t take the current projection at face value. Take it with a grain of salt. It will likely come down a bit when I incorporate the de-duplicating methodology.

I doubt it’ll drop back to 5:00, though. And with Boston in the rearview mirror, there are fewer uncertainties about the future. It is increasingly likely at this point that the cutoff will be above 5:00.