2,050 more qualifiers accepted than last year, correct?
Yep, assuming they had to or were looking at a crazy cutoff?
Now, does that mean they are expanding the field to 32,000 or are they cutting 2,000 charity bibs? I cannot see the second option happening. Maybe the field will be 32,000 from here on out, allowing more qualifiers in.
Are places for overseas runners limited or is it just open to all? I feel like I should do Boston before I get too bored (or too injured) of running marathons
Yep, assuming they had to or were looking at a crazy cutoff?
Now, does that mean they are expanding the field to 32,000 or are they cutting 2,000 charity bibs? I cannot see the second option happening. Maybe the field will be 32,000 from here on out, allowing more qualifiers in.
The field size is still set at "30,000 official entrants" - it's in the full story if you click on the bio in the link.
Can someone confirm for my own understanding, that this means for the 18-34 age group men, a time of 6:51 under the standard (3:00) qualified, so the real standard to hit was 2:53:09?
Rats - and I had a free place to stay next year. Sadly, I doubt that will be an option in 2026 if I get my act together and run faster! Given the expense, Boston won't be an annual thing for me like it used to be!
Yep, assuming they had to or were looking at a crazy cutoff?
Now, does that mean they are expanding the field to 32,000 or are they cutting 2,000 charity bibs? I cannot see the second option happening. Maybe the field will be 32,000 from here on out, allowing more qualifiers in.
30,000 seems to be the compromise field size that towns along the course are happy with, although they'll allow the marathon to go a little over if they have a good reason. Last time they went significantly over was 2014 when they had 35,000 entrants the year after the bombing. Since the BAA hasn't played this card in a while, and next year is the 250th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord and they were also facing a large cutoff time I'm guessing they were able to negotiate a one-year increase.
Likely charities but hopefully the corporate partners, influencers, celebrities etc. that they don't really talk about. Charities and Qualifiers should be the only categories....
they increased time qualifier spots from 22000 to 24000 to keep the 2025 cutoff reasonable. seems pretty clear that if they had stuck with 22000 time qualifier spots, they would've probably breached the 7:47 record cutoff in 2021 with the reduced COVID field size. even at 6:51, they turned away more qualifiers than any other year in history (>12,000 applicants). i think they saw the 2,000+ comments on instagram and wanted to minimize public blowback from a totally outrageous cutoff of 8+ minutes...
but with the newly tightened 2026 BQ standards by 5 minutes, they are now free to cut by another 1-5+ minutes without generating too much ire. look for them to reduce time qualifiers spots back to 22000 to make room for all the bank of america invitational crap, and aim to be 5 minutes faster than the 2026 standards as a minimum safety buffer.
Are places for overseas runners limited or is it just open to all? I feel like I should do Boston before I get too bored (or too injured) of running marathons
Stateside or overseas - same deal. Theoretically they could all come from Finland or Mississippi.
He has been very vocal on threads about incorporating a system that allows a number of first time qualifiers in as long as they have the stand.
He thinks it's unfair if it's your 10th Boston and you have a 20 minutes under qualifying time you get in. But if it would be your first Boston and you only had a minute you don't.
Yet you got influencers like Matt Choi that ran it for the second time with no qualifier or charity affiliation and was gifted a bib in the first wave. I like Kofuzi for the most part but man these influencers seem to live in their own bubbles and not very much in touch with reality. I think it's because a lot of them are still somewhat new to the sport, which isn't a bad thing but they don't understand some things as well as they think they do.
while it would probably generate enthusiasm and quell a lot of discontent among the squeaker marginal BQs to reserve a sliver of bibs for a lottery system, that still ends up arbitrarily screwing over people, just different people
for example: he says reserving a handful of bibs for lottery would have changed 2024 cutoff from 5:29 to, say, 5:40
sure, this gives all BQ attainers a chance to get a lottery bib, but it also completely screws over the time qualifiers who would have otherwise gotten a bib by the normal rank order merit system between 5:29 and 5:40
either we have standards and a meritocracy or we don't. we need to get rid of the "everyone gets a participation trophy" mentality and just encourage the BAA to do what they can to expand the field size to the maximum that the city can handle. and get rid of joke hang glide down a mountain courses. keep things as fair and transparent as possible.
there are thousands of marathons worldwide every year. the mentality of entitlement is insane. can we not have just one race where you have to earn your way in (or raise a ton of money for charity and wear a different colored bib indicating that you are not in the same class of runner)?