What Happens After You Apply to Boston 2027

Published August 20, 2026 · Estimates, updated each registration cycle

Short answer: nothing visible, for about two weeks. When you submit a Boston application during Registration Week your credit card is authorized but not charged. The Boston Athletic Association then verifies every submitted qualifying time, fills the field from the fastest buffers down, and emails acceptance or non-acceptance decisions by early October. The card is only charged if you are accepted.

The payment step confuses almost everyone

Applying is not buying an entry. At submission the BAA places a preauthorization on your card, which can show up on your statement as a pending draft. That hold is not the entry fee. The actual charge appears only after your qualifying time has been verified and your entry accepted. If you are not accepted, the hold falls off and you pay nothing.

For the 2026 race the accepted qualifier entry fee was $260 USD, and registration insurance was offered as an optional add-on at the point of application. Treat that as the reference point rather than a promise for 2027; the BAA publishes the current fee with the registration details. Once charged, the fee is non-refundable, non-transferable and non-deferrable, which is exactly why the insurance option exists (see whether you can defer Boston).

What the BAA is doing during the wait

Three things happen between the Friday close and your email:

• Verification. Every submitted time is checked against the official results of a certified marathon run inside the qualifying window. This is the step that catches typos, wrong race dates, uncertified courses and gun time entered where net time was recorded. Applications with a clean, findable result sail through (see pre-verification).
• The 2027 downhill index. New this cycle, times run on courses with a net elevation drop greater than 1,500 feet are index-adjusted before they are ranked. A borderline buffer from a steep course can move on the wrong side of the line at this stage without you doing anything (see the downhill rule explainer).
• Ranking and the cutoff. Applicants are sorted within each age and gender group by how far under the standard they finished. The BAA accepts from the largest buffers down until the field is full, and the slowest buffer still accepted becomes that year's cutoff. About 1,000 further qualifiers are then drawn at random from those who fell short (see the new qualifier selection).

The scale of the pile

This is a manual review of a very large stack. The previous cycle drew 33,267 qualifier applications from 116 countries and all 50 states, and the field is roughly 30,000 including charity, invitational and other non-qualifier entries. That gap is the entire reason a cutoff exists at all (see why a BQ does not guarantee entry).

When you actually find out

The BAA notifies all applicants of acceptance or non-acceptance by email in early October, and announces the cutoff at the same time. There is no rolling notification and no partial news before then, so refreshing your inbox in late September accomplishes nothing. Check that the email address on your BAA account is current and that mail from the BAA is not being filtered, because the acceptance email carries the payment confirmation and the next steps.

If the answer is no

A non-acceptance email means your buffer fell short of the cutoff and you were not among the random selections. Nothing is charged. Your qualifying time does not roll over, so the next step is a new qualifier inside the next window rather than an appeal (see what to do if you miss the cutoff).

Do this before September 14

The only part of this process you control is the size of your buffer, and that was decided at your qualifying race. What you can still control is being ready: current BAA account details, a card that will accept an authorization, the exact race name, date and finish time to hand, and a realistic expectation of where you sit. The 2026 race cut at 4:34 under the standard, and our central estimate for 2027 is about 5:15, which is an estimate and not a BAA figure. Run your age, gender and finish time through the predictor to see your buffer against that line and against 13 years of real cutoffs, then apply and stop thinking about it until October.