Where to stay

3 hotels inside a ten minute walk of the finish, and 11 within twenty. Where you book matters more here than it does at most races.

The race-week geography

The mistake here is assuming a point-to-point course means you must choose between the start and the finish. You don't. Twin Cities In Motion runs free participant buses in both directions on race morning and afternoon: St. Paul to the Minneapolis start line before the race, and the finish area back to both downtown Minneapolis and downtown St. Paul afterward. That said, the race's own group-rate block is in downtown Minneapolis, both properties at The Depot (Renaissance Minneapolis Hotel and Residence Inn Minneapolis Downtown), quoted at $209 to $229 a night with a two-night minimum and a September 4, 2026 booking deadline. Downtown Minneapolis is the default answer for most runners: you walk to the start, and the shuttle brings you home. The real decision is whether you'd rather walk two blocks at 6:45 a.m. or walk two blocks at 2 p.m. with 26.2 miles in your legs.

Downtown Minneapolis, Mill District and The Depot

5 to 15 minutes to the start at 615 S 6th St

This is where the official block lives and where the start line sits, on 6th Street near U.S. Bank Stadium. Sleeping here means you skip the bus entirely on race morning and can leave your room at 7:15 a.m. for an 8:00 a.m. gun. The catch is on the way in, not the way out: the start-line footprint from 5th to 11th Avenue between 7th and 3rd Street closes at 4:00 a.m. Sunday and does not reopen until roughly 9:00 a.m., so if you are driving in you want the car parked Saturday night, not Sunday morning. At 5:45 a.m. the district is quiet and well lit, with the usual downtown early-morning mix of stadium-event staff and runners in trash bags. Coming back after the race, the free participant bus drops on 6th Street between 10th and 11th Avenue South, which puts you within a few blocks of most of these hotels.

Downtown Minneapolis, Nicollet Mall and the theater blocks

10 to 20 minutes to the start

A little further west, around Nicollet Mall and the 8th-to-10th Street corridor, you get more hotel inventory and better night-before dinner options than the immediate stadium blocks. The 2026 route runs out 6th Street, then Marquette Avenue, 12th Street and Hennepin Avenue, so if you are on the west side of downtown the course may sit between you and the start line: walk to the start before the course closes rather than trying to cross it at 7:45. Nicollet Mall Station on the Green and Blue Lines is right here, which matters for spectators and for anyone who wants a train instead of a walk.

Downtown St. Paul, Lowertown and the Union Depot area

About 1.5 miles to the finish at the State Capitol; roughly 8 miles from the start

Staying in St. Paul flips the logic: you take the morning participant bus to Minneapolis and then finish essentially in your own neighborhood, which is a genuinely nice thing after a marathon. The trade is that race morning gets earlier and less flexible, and you are dependent on a bus schedule that TCM had not published for 2026 at the time of writing. Note also that St. Paul closures start well before Sunday: Summit Avenue between Ramsey Street and Portland Avenue has closed from Saturday morning straight through Sunday evening in recent years, and streets around the Capitol begin closing Thursday, so a car parked casually in that zone is a problem.

Near the Capitol and Rice Street

At or near the finish

There is very little conventional hotel stock immediately at the Capitol; it is a government campus, not a hospitality district. What it does have is free race parking in the Centennial ramps (Orange, Green, Blue and Purple) and free first-come lots at St. Paul College, plus the Capitol/Rice Street Green Line station. Treat this as a place to park or to be dropped, not a place to sleep. Watch the ramp height limits: Green, Blue and Purple cap at 6 feet 4 inches, Orange has no restriction.

Hotels, by walk to the finish

Distances are measured from the modeled course endpoints.

Walk to finish	Hotel	Distance
2 min	Radisson	160 m to finish
8 min	Courtyard	660 m to finish
10 min	Holiday Inn	809 m to finish
11 min	Hampton Inn & Suites	904 m to finish
12 min	DoubleTree	991 m to finish
12 min	DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Downtown St. Paul	992 m to finish
12 min	Drury Plaza Hotel	951 m to finish
13 min	The Saint Paul Hotel	1050 m to finish
15 min	Residence Inn by Marriot	1211 m to finish
16 min	InterContinental Saint Paul Riverfront	1259 m to finish
19 min	Hyatt Place St. Paul/Downtown	1494 m to finish

Race weekend hotels on Booking.com ↗ Race weekend hotels on Expedia ↗

Dates prefilled for Friday October 2 to Monday October 5, 2026. Those are affiliate links: they cost you nothing and they are how this guide stays free.

The morning connection

Metro Transit is the spine of this weekend and the race pays for it: every Marathon Weekend participant gets free bus and light rail on race day, redeemable through an online pass or simply by showing your bib. The Green Line is the single most useful piece of infrastructure in the whole logistics puzzle, because it touches both ends of the course, U.S. Bank Stadium Station at the start and Capitol/Rice Street Station at the finish, which means one train line solves the point-to-point problem for spectators and for runners who miss the bus. Driving is the option that goes wrong. The start-line box closes at 4:00 a.m., the course itself shuts to traffic at 6:30 a.m. for the 10 Mile and 7:30 a.m. for the marathon, and roads are closed a block on either side of the route as the field passes. If you must drive across the metro on Sunday, use the freeways: I-94, I-35W and I-35E. One specific trap: the Marion Street exit from eastbound I-94 closes Saturday morning and Sunday, so use Dale Street to reach the Capitol area.

Room sorted?

Register for the 2026 Twin Cities →on Race Roster

Course geometry provenance is stated beside the player; elevation profiles always use the same route loaded there. City geometry is OpenStreetMap, ODbL. Aerial imagery is from USGS and USDA; other images carry their own source credits. Weather figures use Open-Meteo reanalysis for September 30-October 8 across 2016-2025 at the start line. Schedule, prices and expo hours were checked in 2026-08-26 and are the fields most likely to move: confirm them on www.tcmevents.org/alleventsandraces/medtronictwincitiesmarathonweekend/medtronictwincitiesmarathon before you book anything. Spot an error? Tell us and we'll fix it fast.