Expo, schedule and race morning

Packet pickup

• Friday, February 12, 2027: 11:00 a.m. to 6:50 p.m. per the packet pickup page; the weekend schedule page says 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
• Saturday, February 13, 2027: 9:00 a.m. to 5:50 p.m. per the packet pickup page; the weekend schedule page says 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

• The site gives two different closing times. Packet pickup and the expo landing page both publish 6:50 p.m. Friday and 5:50 p.m. Saturday; the race weekend schedule page publishes 7 p.m. and 6 p.m. Plan around the earlier pair.
• Doors stop admitting people 15 minutes before the expo closes. Combined with the 5:50 p.m. Saturday reading, the real last moment to walk in on Saturday is roughly 5:35 p.m.
• No race-morning packet pickup exists. The schedule page states flatly that every packet must be collected by Saturday, so a Sunday-morning arrival means no bib.
• Packets are not mailed under any circumstance.
• You must collect your own packet. The only exception is a parent collecting for a child aged 17 or under. No friend, spouse or teammate proxy.
• Bring a photo ID plus either your bib number or the QR code emailed about 10 days out. One or the other is enough, but showing up with neither is a problem.
• Palmer Events Center is across Lady Bird Lake from the downtown start/finish area, not walking distance from the Congress Avenue finish, so budget a trip rather than assuming it is next to the hotels.
• The expo itself is free and open to the public. Only registered runners may enter the packet pickup area because of capacity, so friends and family should expect to be split off at that point.
• Banned from the hall: strollers, rolling luggage, bicycles, non-service animals, weapons, aerosols, vaping and smoking gear, and noisemakers. Bike racks sit outside.
• Palmer garage parking runs $10 during expo hours rather than the usual $12.
• The expo page was still displaying the 2026 dates (Friday Feb 13 and Saturday Feb 14, 2026) alongside 2027 content when checked, so treat the packet pickup and schedule pages as the authority on dates.
• Per the FAQ, late entry is possible at the expo up to 3 p.m. on the day before the race, which is earlier than the expo itself closes.

August 2026

The published weekend schedule

Race day is Sunday, February 14, 2027, with the marathon and half both off at 7 a.m. from downtown Austin and the finish on Congress Avenue at the Capitol. The single hard deadline that catches people is Saturday: pickup ends at 5:50 or 6 p.m. depending on which page you believe, entry stops 15 minutes before that, and there is no Sunday-morning option at all, so a Saturday-evening flight into Austin is a real risk. Corrals close at 6:55 a.m. for the 7 a.m. waves. If you are on a half marathon bib in waves E through L, your actual start could be nearly an hour after the gun. Separately, switching between the full and the half is allowed up to February 12, 2027 on a sliding fee scale ($49 through Nov 1, $69 from Nov 2 to Feb 1, $89 from Feb 2 to Feb 12); deferrals to a later year do not exist, and handing your bib to someone else gets both of you banned. The 5K time limit is one hour.

Getting there

Treat Austin as a walking race and you will be fine; treat it as a transit race and you will miss your wave. The single most important fact is that CapMetro's Red Line, whose Downtown and Plaza Saltillo stations look perfect on a map, does not run on Sundays at all. Its published schedule is Monday to Thursday 5 a.m. to 8 p.m., Friday 5 a.m. to midnight, and Saturday 10 a.m. to midnight, with no Sunday service listed. So rail is useful for getting to the expo and to dinner on Saturday evening and is worthless on race morning. That leaves feet, and feet are genuinely enough: the start is 2nd and Congress, the finish is 9th and Congress, and the entire hotel cluster sits between them. Everything else, cars and rideshares included, is fighting a closure that swallows Congress from around 11th Street down to Cesar Chavez and restricts Cesar Chavez itself through the downtown core.

• CapMetro Red Line, Downtown station. Four blocks from the start at 4th and Neches. Excellent Saturday: it gets you in from north Austin or out to dinner and back with no parking. Dead on Sunday, because the line's published hours stop after Saturday. Do not build a race-morning plan around it, and do not assume a marathon-day exception exists, because the race publishes none.
• CapMetro Red Line, Plaza Saltillo station. East side, just across I-35 and about a 15 to 20 minute walk from the start line. Same Saturday-yes, Sunday-no rule. Its real value is the expo and Saturday evening: you can stay east, ride in, and skip parking entirely the day before, then walk on race morning.
• Driving to your hotel on Sunday morning. Assume you cannot. Congress is closed for the start and finish areas, Cesar Chavez is restricted through the core, cross streets close just before the lead runners reach them, and the race explicitly warns that crossing the course by car is extremely difficult and should be avoided, with police permitting crossings only at major intersections when no runners are present. Timing is the one thing the sources disagree on: an aggregator report says closures begin as early as 3 a.m. and most streets reopen around 3 p.m., while news coverage summarised elsewhere describes route streets closed by 6 a.m. with the first closures going in Friday morning. Plan for the earlier figure and you cannot be caught out.
• Roads that stay open, if you must move a car. The race names MoPac, Lamar Boulevard and I-35 as unobstructed north-south, and Ben White Boulevard, Highway 290 and FM 2222/Koenig Lane as the east-west corridors, plus 45th Street westbound between Red River and Guadalupe. Use these to get to the edge of downtown and then stop. The race also recommends leaning on Google Maps and Waze, noting the closures are submitted to both in advance, so live routing will actually reflect them.
• Parking, if you are not staying downtown. The race calls downtown parking plentiful and specifically flags that on-street metered spots are free on Sundays, which is the cheapest option if you arrive early enough to find one. Named garages are State Garage A, B, F, G and N, Austin City Hall, and Texas Capitol Visitors Parking. Two conditions attached: state garages can start charging by late morning when the Moody Center has an event, and if you intend to drive away while the marathon is still in progress you should park on the west side of downtown, because the course pins in the other approaches.
• Getting back to your room after you finish. Walk. You finish at 9th and Congress, just south of the Capitol, and gear check is a block and a half away on W. 7th between Congress and Colorado, so the natural sequence is finish, collect your bag, then continue south on Congress to whichever of the hotels you booked, all of which are between 1 and 4 minutes from the start at 2nd. Nothing about that route requires crossing the live course. If you are east of I-35, walk back the way you came rather than waiting on a rideshare that cannot reach you.
• The last two climbs, so you know what you are walking back down. Your own course file shows the damage front-loaded, mile 0.3 to 3.51 gaining 243 feet, and then a sting at mile 25.31 to 25.97 with 70 feet up Enfield Hill. That second one lands about half a mile from the finish, which is worth knowing when you are choosing where to put people who are watching and where you want your bed to be. Seven blocks of flat Congress afterwards is a merciful walk home.
• Dinner the night before. Red Ash Italia, 303 Colorado Street, about three blocks west of Congress and a flat walk from every hotel on the list. It is wood-fired Italian with handmade pasta, which is the entire point on a Saturday night, and it is downtown rather than out on East 6th, so you are not adding a car or a long walk to your evening. Book ahead, because their site does not publish hours and downtown Austin on a race Saturday is not a walk-in city.

Parking near the course endpoints

These are mapped garages near the course, not a promise of race-day access. Check closures and pre-booking rules with the organizer.

• Austin Convention Center Parking Garage 2nd Street2 minute modeled walk to start
• The Whitley3 minute modeled walk to start
• Chase Tower Parking Garage5 minute modeled walk to start
• Lavaca Plaza6 minute modeled walk to start
• State Garage N7 minute modeled walk to start
• 700 Lavaca Parking10 minute modeled walk to start
• 9th St Garage10 minute modeled walk to start
• APD Main Garage12 minute modeled walk to start
• Capitol Visitor's Parking Garage16 minute modeled walk to start

Published entry tiers

Checked 2026-08-26; fees and tiers can change.