The 2028 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials: St. Louis, and the clock is already running

St. Louis will host the 2028 U.S. Olympic Team Trials — Marathon on 25 March 2028. Qualifying is already open: the window began on 1 September 2026, which was last week. If you are chasing a start line in St. Louis, the clock is running now.

The essentials

Why St. Louis, and why March

USATF announced St. Louis as host in June 2026, selecting it over a competing bid from Phoenix. The Trials will be the first U.S. Olympic team selection event in any sport for the Los Angeles Games — which gives the day a weight beyond the marathon itself, and a good deal more attention than a Trials would ordinarily carry.

The date is a genuine change. The 2016, 2020 and 2024 Trials were all held in February. Moving to late March shifts the entire build: a full winter of training in northern latitudes, a later peak, and a different calculation about which autumn marathon to use as a qualifier. For anyone planning backwards from the start line, that six-week shift is not a detail.

The women's standard held. The men's didn't.

The most discussed line in the standards announcement is what did not change. The women's marathon qualifying time stays at 2:37:00, identical to the 2024 cycle. The men's standard tightened by two minutes, from 2:18:00 to 2:16:00.

Holding the women's mark steady while cutting the men's has predictable consequences for the size and shape of the women's field. The 2024 women's Trials field was large, and keeping the same standard through a cycle in which American women's marathoning has continued to deepen points towards another substantial start list. Whether that is the right outcome is an argument worth having — a big field is a genuinely different race, tactically, from a small one, and it changes who a Trials is for. What is not in dispute is that USATF has treated the two fields differently, and said so plainly by leaving one number alone.

The routes in

The marathon standard is the obvious path, but it is not the only one. Athletes can also qualify by:

• Half marathon — 1:12:00 for women, 1:03:00 for men, but only for performances from 1 January 2027 onwards. A half run in late 2026 will not count, however fast.
• U.S. Marathon Championships — a top-ten finish qualifies.
• Prior Olympic team membership — members of the last three U.S. Olympic marathon teams are eligible.

The A and B standards are back, and the A times are missing

USATF is reinstating a two-tier system. Meeting the B standard qualifies you for the Trials. Meeting the faster A standard additionally earns funded travel and accommodation.

The A times have not been published yet. That gap matters more than it might appear. For a large share of the women's field, qualifying was never the hard part — paying to be there was. Athletes without shoe contracts routinely fund their own flights, accommodation and a support person for a race that is, for most of the field, the biggest of their careers. Where USATF sets the A standard determines how many of them get help, and it is the number to watch when it eventually lands.

If you're chasing it

The practical position as of today: the window is open, marathon performances count from now, and half marathon performances start counting on 1 January 2027. That makes the coming autumn and spring marathon calendar live for qualifying purposes, and it means anyone planning to use the half as their route in has a defined start date to build towards rather than an open field.

Eighteen months is enough time to build a marathon qualifier from a standing start, and not much more than enough. It is a good moment to decide which race you are actually aiming at.

More on training, fueling and racing in our performance coverage, and across Feisty Women's Performance.