The New York City Marathon

The experience

Five bridge climbs on an otherwise flat street course, opening into the harbour wind on the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge and closing on the rolling drives of Central Park, in November weather that runs from cold rain to warm sun.

The five-borough course was first run in 1976 for the United States Bicentennial, and 2026 is its 50th anniversary. The 2025 race had 59,226 finishers, the largest marathon ever held.

The first New York City Marathon, on 13 September 1970, was run entirely inside Central Park with 127 entrants, a $1 entry fee, a $1,000 budget and 55 finishers. In 1976, for the Bicentennial, it moved onto the streets of all five boroughs, a format every big-city marathon since has copied. Grete Waitz won it nine times; Germán Silva of Mexico won in 1994 after taking a wrong turn half a mile from the finish.

Where the sources disagreeThis is a race course, not a route: outside the first Sunday of November the bridges are expressway decks and the avenues are traffic. The 2026 drawing drew more than 240,000 applications and accepted about one percent. The other doors are a charity place with a fundraising commitment of $3,000 or more on top of a $255 to $315 registration fee, a time standard that in 2026 needed to be beaten by almost 23 minutes to make the top ten percent of outside qualifiers, or nine NYRR races and a volunteer shift in the year before. Race pages still carried 2025 timings on 16 September 2026; corral, sweep and closure times are subject to change.