Hotels for Boston Marathon 2027

The Boston Marathon on Patriots' Day, Monday 19 April 2027, is the world's oldest annual marathon and the one you mostly have to qualify for — a fiercely prized point-to-point race from the small town of Hopkinton, 26.2 miles east through the scream tunnel at Wellesley and over Heartbreak Hill to the finish on Boylston Street in Back Bay.

Nobody stays in Hopkinton: runners are bussed there before dawn from Boston Common, so the smart base is central Boston near the finish, the expo and the buses. Patriots' Day is a Massachusetts holiday and the whole city turns out, which means hotels sell out well ahead, so book early. Collect your bib at the expo (at the Hynes Convention Center in Back Bay) in the days before — there's no race-day pickup.

The Boston Marathon is the world's oldest annual marathon, first run in 1897 and inspired by the marathon at the revived Olympic Games in Athens the year before. Organised by the Boston Athletic Association and held every year on Patriots' Day, the third Monday of April, it is a point-to-point race that starts in the town of Hopkinton and runs east through a chain of Massachusetts towns to a finish on Boylston Street in the Back Bay.

Its most notorious feature is the series of Newton hills late in the race, the last of them nicknamed Heartbreak Hill, while the roar of Wellesley College students forms the famous 'scream tunnel' near halfway. Unusually, most runners must post a qualifying time to enter, which gives a place on the start line a special cachet.

The race was officially closed to women until 1972, some years after Kathrine Switzer's celebrated 1967 run; today it is one of the seven Abbott World Marathon Majors and a bucket-list goal for club runners the world over.