Expo, schedule and race morning

Packet pickup

• Thursday, October 29, 2026: 10:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m. (unconfirmed for 2026)
• Friday, October 30, 2026: 10:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m. (unconfirmed for 2026)
• Saturday, October 31, 2026: 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. (unconfirmed for 2026)

• Attendance is mandatory and personal. Every runner has to walk into the Javits Center to get their bib, and no one may collect it on your behalf. There is no proxy pickup, no mailing option, and no bib pickup on race morning at Fort Wadsworth. If you land in New York on Saturday night, you have no race.
• Saturday afternoon is your last window and it is the shortest day. The expo closes for good at 5:00 p.m. Saturday, October 31, roughly 16 hours before the first waves leave Staten Island. Build your travel around that, not around the marathon start.
• Pickup runs on assigned time slots you choose yourself in your NYRR dashboard. Pick a slot early: the good ones for people arriving Thursday and Friday go first, and if you never select one you are relying on whatever is left.
• Bring two things or you will be turned away: a government-issued photo ID and your printed or on-screen runner confirmation form from your NYRR account. The name on the ID has to match the entry.
• At the counter you receive your bib, your timing tag, and your New Balance shirt. Check the bib number and the B-Tag on the back before you leave the hall, because sorting a bad bib is an expo problem, not a race-morning problem.
• Personalized bibs with your first name printed on them had to be ordered by September 8, 2026. That deadline is long past by race week and cannot be reopened at the expo.
• The expo is at 11th Avenue in the far west 30s, on the opposite side of Manhattan from the Central Park finish where most runners stay. Allow real travel time in both directions and treat it as a separate outing, not a stop on the way to something else.
• Go in with a list and get out. Do not buy shoes, socks, gels, or anything else you have not already run in. Standing on a concrete hall floor for three hours two days before a marathon is a self-inflicted wound.
• Saturday, October 31 is a double-booked day: the Abbott Dash to the Finish Line 5K runs that morning and the expo closes that afternoon. If you are doing both, you are crossing the city twice on the day before the marathon.

August 2026

The published weekend schedule

This is a point-to-point race and the geography is the whole problem. You will almost certainly sleep near the Central Park finish on the Upper West Side or around Columbus Circle, and the start is at Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island, the far corner of the city in the other direction. There is no walking to this start and no driving to it: the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge is closed. NYRR assigns you a transportation method and a departure time when you register (Staten Island Ferry, a bus from Manhattan, or a bus from the New Jersey Meadowlands), and that assignment is your only way in. From the West Side you take the subway down to Whitehall Terminal for the ferry, cross about 25 minutes to St. George, then board a shuttle bus to Fort Wadsworth; the ferry-to-start leg alone can run over an hour, so plan on three to four hours between leaving your room and your wave gun, in the dark, in whatever early-November cold New York hands you. Wear throwaway layers you will never see again. The flip side of the point-to-point is the good news: after you finish in Central Park you are walking, not commuting, and the hotels already measured sit five to nine minutes from the finish line.

Getting there

Everything on race morning is a queue with a clock attached. For 2026, NYRR changed the model: you pick your mode of transportation (Staten Island Ferry, New York Public Library bus, or New Jersey Meadowlands bus) and NYRR assigns your departure time based on your registered or best pace, rather than you choosing the time yourself. Selections opened on August 25 and can be changed through September 8 at 11:59pm ET, after which you are living with what you picked. Both ends of the day are longer than they look: budget 60 to 90 minutes from joining the queue to clearing security at Fort Wadsworth, and 20 to 30 minutes of walking after you cross the line before you are out of the park.

• The Staten Island Ferry route. Ferries leave Whitehall Terminal, run free, and go every 15 minutes on marathon Sunday, with runner departures roughly in the 5:00 to 6:15am band. The crossing is about 25 to 30 minutes to St. George Terminal, where free shuttle buses take runners to Fort Wadsworth. Reckon on about 90 minutes total from stepping onto the boat to being inside the start village. NYRR recommends the ferry for anyone expecting to finish in four hours or more, because it lands you closer to your actual wave time instead of leaving you sitting in a field.
• Getting to Whitehall. Whitehall Terminal is reachable by the 1 to South Ferry, the N/Q/R/W to Whitehall Street-South Ferry, and the 4 to Bowling Green, plus the M15, M20 and M55 buses. From the Upper West Side the clean version is a single 1 train from 72nd, 79th or 86th straight down, about 30 minutes with no transfer. That one-seat ride is a real argument for the west side over the east side.
• The Manhattan bus. Buses load at the New York Public Library, 42nd Street and 5th Avenue, and depart between roughly 5:00 and 6:15am, with most service done by about 6:30. Arrive about 15 minutes before your assigned departure. In practice this option is most useful for the earlier waves, since later-wave runners on a bus tend to land at Fort Wadsworth very early and then wait two-plus hours in the village with limited toilets, whereas the ferry lets you wait inside a terminal building.
• The New Jersey option. There is a third official choice, buses from the Meadowlands, aimed at runners based in New Jersey rather than Manhattan. It carries the same problem as the Manhattan bus for later waves: arrival timing tends to deposit you in the village well ahead of your start.
• Missing your assigned slot. No official penalty or rescue policy was found on any page reached, which is itself the honest answer: this is not a ticketed boarding you are refused. What is documented is why drifting hurts you. Staten Island shuttle buses are dispatched against the selected departure times, so people arriving off-schedule create bottlenecks and land themselves in the wrong queue at the wrong moment. The immovable deadline is not the ferry, it is your corral: corrals close roughly 25 minutes before the wave goes, and in 2025 an 8:45am corral close preceded a 9:10am mass start.
• What time you actually wake up. A concrete 2025 example from a runner in a later wave: awake at 4:00am, out the door by 5:00, on the 5:45 ferry, through security and into the village at 7:20, corral closed 8:45, wave off at 9:10. Working backward from a ferry that is 90 minutes end to end and a 60 to 90 minute bus-plus-security sequence, a 4:00 to 4:30 alarm is normal, not paranoid. Reference start times: wheelchair divisions at 8:00 and 8:02, elite women 8:35, elite men 9:05, and the five mass waves rolling from about 9:10.
• Getting out of the finish. The finish is on West Drive at West 67th Street next to Tavern on the Green, but you are not done walking. The poncho is handed out about a half mile past the line, and the runner exit at West 77th Street is roughly 0.95 miles from the finisher chute, which takes 20 to 30 minutes at post-marathon pace in a slow-moving crowd. If you want your own clothes, bags are pre-checked at Rumsey Playfield in Central Park on the Friday or Saturday beforehand rather than carried from Staten Island. Meeting people is easier on the family reunion exits, which put you out onto Central Park West at 66th, 65th, 64th or 63rd Street.
• The subway after the race. The 72nd Street, 66th Street-Lincoln Center and 59th Street-Columbus Circle stations are the relevant ones, but note the geometry: you exit at 77th, and Central Park West is closed below 76th, so you are walking west to Broadway or Columbus before you find a working entrance. The MTA staffs these stations heavily on race day and may designate some stairways entrance-only or exit-only to control crowds. Service is also modified: northbound 1 trains run express between 96th and 145th, and northbound 6 trains run express between Grand Central-42nd and 125th.
• Street closures around Central Park West. Central Park West is closed between Columbus Circle and West 76th Street. West 59th Street is closed between 5th Avenue and Columbus Circle, along with Columbus Circle itself and Grand Army Plaza. The family reunion footprint closes West 61st through West 74th between Central Park West and Broadway/Columbus Avenue, and the West 67th, 77th, 81st and 85th Street approaches to West Drive are shut. The Central Park transverse roads at 65th, 79th and 96th are closed for most of the day.
• When the closures start and end. Closures begin somewhere between midnight and 6:30am on race Sunday and generally hold until around 9pm, at NYPD discretion. In 2025 the no-parking rules on Central Park West from 60th to 66th and from 74th to 96th ran from Saturday through Sunday, so the street changes character the night before, not just on race morning. The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge closes to all non-emergency traffic from 7:00am to 4:00pm, and the Staten Island Expressway closes around 7:00am, which is why driving yourself is not a plan.

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.

• Lincoln Center Self-Park8 minute modeled walk to finish
• Alfred Car Park, LLC10 minute modeled walk to finish

Published entry tiers

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