2027 Stockholm Marathon - May 29 Countdown

Q: How do I get an entry for the 2027 Stockholm Marathon?

Registration is closed right now and reopens on Monday 24 August 2026 at 09:00 CEST, with the organiser stating that “Only 4,000 spots remain available for the 2027 event” and that they will be allocated on a first come, first served basis. In your own time zone that is 08:00 in the UK, 10:00 in Finland, 03:00 US Eastern, midnight US Pacific and 16:00 in Japan. The reopening price is 1,495 SEK, holding until 1 November 2026, then 1,795 SEK to 25 April 2027 and 1,995 SEK from 26 April to race day; the earlier and cheaper period closed on 7 June 2026 and will not return. One detail catches international runners out: the English entry page lists credit card, Visa or MasterCard, as the only payment method — Swish, Klarna invoicing and direct bank transfer appear on the Swedish page and are domestic options. Entry is open to runners born in 2009 or earlier and is binding: the organiser does not refund entry fees for non-participation.

Q: What is the time limit — and why can “6 hours 30 minutes” be misleading?

The official limit is 6 hours 30 minutes, set by the permit from the Swedish Police Authority. The catch is in the next line of the same page: there are four checkpoints with cut-off times, and “these cut-off times apply regardless of when you crossed the start line”. In the 2026 edition the checkpoints were 21.1 km by 15:35, 27 km by 16:25, 32 km by 17:15 and 35.5 km by 17:45, and the field started in three waves at 12:00, 12:08 and 12:16. A runner in the last wave therefore had 3 hours 19 minutes to cover the first half, not 3 hours 35, and 5 hours 29 minutes to reach 35.5 km. Runners who miss a checkpoint are transported back to the stadium area. The 2027 checkpoints and wave times have not been announced; if you are targeting anything slower than about 5 hours 30, the checkpoints — not the headline limit — are what you should be pacing against.

Q: Which start wave will I be in, and how is seeding decided?

Seeding is based on the expected finish time you enter during registration. If you enter a time faster than 3:35 you must verify it with an official race result, and the organiser states plainly that Strava and other training apps do not count as official results. For other distances they point runners at the jogg.se conversion calculator. No deadline for changing your seeding after entry appears on the marathon's own seeding pages, so if you need to move, ask customer service rather than working to a date you found elsewhere. This matters more than it looks: your declared time decides your wave, your wave decides how much slack you have before the fixed-clock checkpoints, and an over-optimistic entry time cannot be traded for extra minutes on the day.

Q: Does the Stockholm Marathon course repeat itself?

Yes — it is an asymmetric two-lap course, not one continuous loop, and the organiser is explicit about it. The course description says Gamla Stan “is now circled on both passes”, and in the kilometre-by-kilometre guide the closing entries are written as cross-references: “See section 5”, “See section 6”, on through “See section 10”. Independent geometry from the official GPX file matches — from about km 34.5 the route retraces km 3.4-10.2 in the same direction, roughly the last seven kilometres. Skeppsbron appears three times in the aid-station table and Karlaplan twice. The practical consequence is a rare gift: you get a preview of your own finish inside the first hour. Note where the road tilts up around Narvavägen and Sturegatan, because you will meet both again after 39 kilometres.

Q: How much elevation gain does the course have?

The organiser has never published an elevation figure — not on the course page, not in the participant information, and not in the course-map or beginners' guide PDFs. Third-party totals vary wildly because they depend on the smoothing threshold, so any single number you see quoted should be treated as one method's answer rather than a fact. What the official GPX supports directly is more useful anyway: the whole route spans about 35 metres of altitude, the highest point is only 36 metres above sea level (Lundagatan, just past km 26), and start and finish sit about 180 metres apart with a net change near zero. That last pair of facts is also why the course satisfies Boston's separation and net-drop rules, and it is measured to World Athletics rules by the Swedish federation. The number that will actually cost you time is the 18 metres you climb in the final 3 kilometres.

Q: Can I get a refund or transfer my entry?

Entry is binding and the organiser does not refund fees for non-participation. Their customer service states that the only route to a refund is having taken out Folksam's motionsloppsförsäkring (bas or stor), a Swedish domestic race insurance, with the claim handled by Folksam rather than the race — which in practice makes refunds a route open mainly to runners based in Sweden. Name changes do exist, and the organiser publishes two routes. It calls bytastartplats.se the easiest way, and the alternative is a name change made directly from your participant account at manage.marathongruppen.se, using the “Registration Options” button, entering the new runner's name and email and choosing whether you or they pay the fee. Either way the deadline is 10 days before the race, and the fee amount is not published. Do not confuse this with informally handing over a bib: the race rules state the bib is personal and may not be transferred to another runner, and the organiser explicitly warns against paying anyone outside those two routes.

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Race Information

Race	2027 Stockholm Marathon - May 29
City	Stockholm
Date	2027-05-29 at 12:00
Field Size	~18,921 runners
Time Limit	6 hours 30 min
Cutoff pace	9:15/km
Course speed	Typical pace Speed index 0.97 — median of the last 4 winners' times against the global same-year median. Winner times track elite fields and prize money, so this reads the course as a proxy, not a pure measurement.
Timezone	Europe/Stockholm
Official Site	Marathongruppen i Stockholm AB (Hasselby SK & Sparvagens FK)

Race Day Weather

Average Temperature	13.1°C / 56°F
Humidity	75%
Wind	12.1 km/h
Rain Chance	33%
Typical Conditions	Late May in Stockholm reads mild on paper, but the 12:00 gun puts most of the field on course through the warmest hours of a long Nordic day. Across SMHI hourly observations for the race window (May 25 to Jun 5, 12:00-18:00 local time, 1997-2025, station Stockholm-Observatoriekullen), roughly one hour in four was 20°C or warmer, and the highest reading across those 29 seasons was 29.8°C. Recent editions bear it out, and the heat arrives after the gun rather than before it: the same station read 20.3°C at the 2026 start and 22.4°C an hour later, and in 2024 it was 25.4°C at noon and peaked at 27.2°C at 15:00.

What to Prepare: Plan for warmth, not for cold. Fix a heat-adjusted target before you travel instead of improvising on race morning, and use the cooling showers and running-water channels the organiser sets just before every hydration station - that is what your cap is for, not the drinking cups. A singlet, a light cap and sunscreen cover the exposed Djurgården and waterfront stretches. Pack the warm layer in your kit bag rather than wearing it: the bag has to be handed in by 11:00 and you will not see it again until you have walked the 300 metres from the finish to Östermalms IP.

Based on historical averages for race week. Use our Weather Score Calculator and What to Wear Guide for personalized advice.

Wind Impact on Race Day

Wind at 12.1 km/h can affect your marathon pace by 5-15 seconds per kilometer. Headwinds slow you down exponentially — a 20 km/h wind costs more than twice a 10 km/h wind.

Calculate your wind-adjusted pace →

Race-Week Climate

Based on 20 years of race-week weather (2005-2024), MERRA-2 reanalysis

	Cooler	Typical	Warmer
Temperature	9.7°C	12.7°C	17°C
Dew point	5.2°C	8.2°C	11.9°C

Wet-day chance: 33% Runnability: 78/100

Data: NASA POWER (MERRA-2 reanalysis), NASA Langley Research Center

Course Profile

Course Type	Asymmetric two-lap city course finishing on the track inside Stockholm Olympic Stadium
Terrain	Paved city streets and bridges across the waterways between Stockholm's islands, with two passes around the medieval lanes of Gamla Stan, where the organiser warns of uneven pavement and narrow sections. Tram tracks on Hamngatan are flagged as a hazard. The finish is on the track inside the 1912 Olympic Stadium.
Profile	There is no big hill anywhere. The whole route spans about 35 metres of altitude, and its highest point - Lundagatan, just past km 26 - sits only 36 metres above sea level, with start and finish about 180 metres apart and a net change of roughly zero (measured from the organiser's own GPX; no official climb figure has ever been published). The efforts that matter are Narvavägen (a 600-metre pull at 2-3%), the 3% climb to Manillahuset, a full kilometre up Katarinavägen from Slussen, Lundagatan and Västerbron - all of them before km 28 - and then a final 3 kilometres that claws 18 metres back up Sturegatan to the stadium.
Boston Qualifier	Yes — Check your BQ time

Finisher Trend

Year	Finishers	vs prev.
2024	17,002	—
2025	18,865	+11.0%

Runners who crossed the line, not the registered field size.

Course Analysis

Course Overview: Two Passes, Not One Lap

Stockholm is routinely described as one continuous lap of the city. The organiser's own pages say otherwise. The course description states that Gamla Stan “is now circled on both passes”, and the kilometre-by-kilometre guide stops writing new text near the end: six consecutive entries in the closing stretch read only “See section 5” through “See section 10”. Geometry from the official GPX agrees — from roughly km 34.5 the route retraces km 3.4-10.2 in the same direction. The last seven kilometres are ground you already covered inside your first hour, which makes the opening kilometres worth memorising rather than daydreaming through.

This is the layout introduced for the 2026 edition, and it is the newest one the organiser has published — the course page is still headed as the 2026 course, with no 2027 revision announced. Against the older route, Västerbron is crossed once instead of twice, Södermalm's SoFo quarter is included for the first time, and the three hardest sections — Katarinavägen, Hornsgatan/Lundagatan and Västerbron — all land before km 28. The organiser counts three passes of the Royal Palace; Skeppsbron appears three times in the aid-station table.

On scale and standing: the 2026 edition had 20,302 starters and 18,921 finishers, both beating the previous year's figures — 18,921 is a finisher count, not the size of the entry list, which the organiser sold out at 25,000 places that year. The race is sanctioned by AIMS, World Athletics and the Swedish Athletics Association, and the 2026 edition held a World Athletics Label — the entry tier of that scheme, below the Elite, Gold and Platinum tiers. Labels are awarded per calendar year and the 2027 edition is not yet listed. The course was measured in May 2026 by the federation's international measurer Mikael Hill. The finish is inside Stockholms Stadion, built for the 1912 Olympics; the organiser describes it as “the home of 83 officially recognized world records” in athletics.

Start to Halfway: Learn These Kilometres, You Run Them Again

The race starts on Lidingövägen, on the wide road outside Östermalms IP beside the Stadion clock tower, and the official guide's first instruction is a warning: do not turn left out of habit toward the stadium — the finish is 42 kilometres away. From km 3.4 the course enters the stretch you will run a second time after km 34.5: past Central Station, down to Gamla Stan and Skeppsbron, out through Kungsträdgården and Strandvägen to Karlaplan.

The first real effort is Narvavägen, which the organiser calls a “nearly 600-meter, tree-lined incline with a gradient of about 2-3%” — and adds, pointedly, that “you'll return here after nearly 40 kilometres of running”. A second, longer 3% climb rises toward Manillahuset out on Djurgården around km 15, after which the course drops onto Djurgårdsvägen, the longest uninterrupted stretch of the day, passing Skansen at km 18. The official note here is the one to bank on: “From here, there are no hills all the way to Slussen.”

Halfway arrives at Slussen, which is also the 21.1 km cut-off point, and it is immediately followed by the day's longest climb: “a full kilometre uphill from Slussen along Katarinavägen”, steepest at the bottom. The organiser's advice is worth taking literally — shorten your stride, and do not chase other runners or your heart rate here. Because the checkpoint at Slussen is a clock time rather than an elapsed time (see Race Strategy), the safest first half is an even one; set it with the Race Splits Calculator before you travel.

Halfway to Finish: The High Point at km 26, Then Back Onto the Opening Route

Past Katarinavägen the course turns onto Hornsgatan for a single block, then left onto Lundagatan — the highest point of the whole marathon, which the official guide flags as “a tough climb… followed by an equally steep descent”. In absolute terms it is not much of a summit: the GPX puts it at 36 metres above sea level, just past km 26. The descent that follows is the sharpest drop on the course, and the organiser's warning about it is specific — practise landing lightly on downhills beforehand, “otherwise your thighs may take a beating toward the end of the race”.

Västerbron follows around km 28, now crossed only once and approached from Långholmsgatan, which the organiser describes as a gentler line than the old route that had to be “conquered twice”. From there the course runs the long, crowd-friendly stretch along Norr Mälarstrand to City Hall, climbs briefly on Kungsholmen toward Fleminggatan, and then drops back down to Central Station.

That is where the second pass begins. From roughly km 34.5 you are back on the opening route — Munkbron, Gamla Stan, Kungsträdgården, Strandvägen, Karlaplan — and Narvavägen comes round again near km 39, exactly as the guide promised at km 8. The sting is in the tail: the last 3 kilometres gain 18 metres net, up Sturegatan toward Valhallavägen, and the organiser deliberately extends the route “one more block to Engelbrektsgatan” to make up the final metres rather than diving straight for the stadium. The finish is on the track inside Stockholms Stadion, which opens to spectators at 12:15. If you are pacing to finish rather than to survive, plan that closing climb with the Elevation Impact Calculator.

Race Strategy: Cut-Off Clocks, a Noon Gun and 13 Aid Stations

The cut-offs are clock times, and that changes the maths. The official 2027 page sets a maximum of 6 hours 30 minutes under the permit issued by the Swedish Police Authority, then adds the sentence that actually governs your day: there are four checkpoints, and “these cut-off times apply regardless of when you crossed the start line”. In 2026 those checkpoints were 21.1 km by 15:35, 27 km by 16:25, 32 km by 17:15 and 35.5 km by 17:45, while the field left in three waves at 12:00, 12:08 and 12:16. Do the arithmetic for the last wave: a 12:16 starter has 3 hours 19 minutes to reach halfway, not 3 hours 35, and 5 hours 29 minutes to reach 35.5 km. The pacers add one more trap — they run to gun time measured “from the starting signal for each start wave”, so a pacer's clock and the checkpoint clock are not the same clock. Wave times and checkpoints for 2027 have not been published yet; treat the 2026 numbers as the shape, not the schedule.

Noon in late May is the real difficulty, not the terrain. The organiser's own 2026 report says the summery sun “pushed the temperature to 22 degrees and damped the participants' pace”. The SMHI station near the finish puts numbers on that: 20.3°C at the gun, 22.4°C an hour later — the 22-degree line describes 13:00, not the start. Two years earlier the same station read 25.4°C at noon and peaked at 27.2°C at 15:00. Across 29 seasons of that race window, roughly one hour in four sits at 20°C or above. The race-week climate percentiles above are a different measurement — whole-day MERRA-2 averages for the week around race day — which is why they read several degrees cooler than hourly observations for the hours you actually race. A 4-hour runner starting at noon is out until 16:00, squarely inside that band, so set a heat-adjusted goal with the Heat Pace Adjustment Calculator rather than a personal-best goal, and use the cooling showers and water channels placed just before each hydration station.

Fuelling: 13 hydration stations and 10 energy stations, and a gap you should plan for. This is the layout published in the 2026 participant information; nothing separate has been issued for 2027. Drinks come at 3.5, 5.7, 8.6, 12.9, 16.9, 19.9, 24.2, 26.9, 28.6, 31.8, 34.5, 36.7 and 39.8 km; stations 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9 and 12 serve water only, the rest add Enervit orange sports drink on the first tables. The longest gaps are 4.3 km (8.6 to 12.9, and 19.9 to 24.2) — the second one lands right where the climbs start. The energy stations are distinctly Scandinavian: bananas at 8.6, a cola-flavoured gel at 16.9, pickles at 24.2, apple wedges at 26.1, dextrose at 28.6, vegetable broth at 31.8, bananas again at 34.5, Red Bull at 36, coffee at 36.7 and cola at 39.8. If you fuel on gels, note the first one is not until 16.9 km — carry your own for the opening hour.

Race morning runs on a tight clock. In 2026 the kit bag had to be dropped by 11:00, the start pens opened at 10:45, and runners had to be inside by 11:45 (groups A-E) or 11:55 (groups F-J) for a noon gun. The Expo at Lejonhallen closed at 11:30 on race morning — bibs are printed live on site and the organiser expects around 30,000 visitors, with afternoons after 16:00 the busiest — so collect on Thursday or Friday and keep Saturday morning for the race. After finishing you get your medal in the stadium, a refillable bottle 150 metres later at the clock tower, then walk 300 metres to Östermalms IP for the finisher shirt and finish bag; that area is open to participants only, so arrange to meet family on Lidingövägen outside the stadium.

Prepare for 2027 Stockholm Marathon - May 29

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Frequently Asked Questions

How do I get an entry for the 2027 Stockholm Marathon?

Registration is closed right now and reopens on Monday 24 August 2026 at 09:00 CEST, with the organiser stating that “Only 4,000 spots remain available for the 2027 event” and that they will be allocated on a first come, first served basis. In your own time zone that is 08:00 in the UK, 10:00 in Finland, 03:00 US Eastern, midnight US Pacific and 16:00 in Japan. The reopening price is 1,495 SEK, holding until 1 November 2026, then 1,795 SEK to 25 April 2027 and 1,995 SEK from 26 April to race day; the earlier and cheaper period closed on 7 June 2026 and will not return. One detail catches international runners out: the English entry page lists credit card, Visa or MasterCard, as the only payment method — Swish, Klarna invoicing and direct bank transfer appear on the Swedish page and are domestic options. Entry is open to runners born in 2009 or earlier and is binding: the organiser does not refund entry fees for non-participation.

Will the remaining 4,000 places go quickly?

Plan as if they will, but be aware of what is and is not published. Two figures come straight from the organiser: the first entry period closed with 21,000 places sold in two weeks, and 4,000 remain for the August reopening. Those add to 25,000, the same total the 2026 edition sold out at, though no 2027 cap has been announced in its own right. The race has now sold out three years running, and the 2026 edition sold out on 5 November 2025 — 206 days before race day. What the organiser has never published is how fast any single period sold, so nobody can honestly tell you the remaining places vanish in minutes or in weeks. The practical read: have your account details and card ready before 09:00 CEST on 24 August rather than budgeting a leisurely week to decide, and if you miss it, watch for the 2028 entry window rather than third-party bib offers.

What is the time limit — and why can “6 hours 30 minutes” be misleading?

The official limit is 6 hours 30 minutes, set by the permit from the Swedish Police Authority. The catch is in the next line of the same page: there are four checkpoints with cut-off times, and “these cut-off times apply regardless of when you crossed the start line”. In the 2026 edition the checkpoints were 21.1 km by 15:35, 27 km by 16:25, 32 km by 17:15 and 35.5 km by 17:45, and the field started in three waves at 12:00, 12:08 and 12:16. A runner in the last wave therefore had 3 hours 19 minutes to cover the first half, not 3 hours 35, and 5 hours 29 minutes to reach 35.5 km. Runners who miss a checkpoint are transported back to the stadium area. The 2027 checkpoints and wave times have not been announced; if you are targeting anything slower than about 5 hours 30, the checkpoints — not the headline limit — are what you should be pacing against.

Which start wave will I be in, and how is seeding decided?

Seeding is based on the expected finish time you enter during registration. If you enter a time faster than 3:35 you must verify it with an official race result, and the organiser states plainly that Strava and other training apps do not count as official results. For other distances they point runners at the jogg.se conversion calculator. No deadline for changing your seeding after entry appears on the marathon's own seeding pages, so if you need to move, ask customer service rather than working to a date you found elsewhere. This matters more than it looks: your declared time decides your wave, your wave decides how much slack you have before the fixed-clock checkpoints, and an over-optimistic entry time cannot be traded for extra minutes on the day.

Does the Stockholm Marathon course repeat itself?

Yes — it is an asymmetric two-lap course, not one continuous loop, and the organiser is explicit about it. The course description says Gamla Stan “is now circled on both passes”, and in the kilometre-by-kilometre guide the closing entries are written as cross-references: “See section 5”, “See section 6”, on through “See section 10”. Independent geometry from the official GPX file matches — from about km 34.5 the route retraces km 3.4-10.2 in the same direction, roughly the last seven kilometres. Skeppsbron appears three times in the aid-station table and Karlaplan twice. The practical consequence is a rare gift: you get a preview of your own finish inside the first hour. Note where the road tilts up around Narvavägen and Sturegatan, because you will meet both again after 39 kilometres.

How much elevation gain does the course have?

The organiser has never published an elevation figure — not on the course page, not in the participant information, and not in the course-map or beginners' guide PDFs. Third-party totals vary wildly because they depend on the smoothing threshold, so any single number you see quoted should be treated as one method's answer rather than a fact. What the official GPX supports directly is more useful anyway: the whole route spans about 35 metres of altitude, the highest point is only 36 metres above sea level (Lundagatan, just past km 26), and start and finish sit about 180 metres apart with a net change near zero. That last pair of facts is also why the course satisfies Boston's separation and net-drop rules, and it is measured to World Athletics rules by the Swedish federation. The number that will actually cost you time is the 18 metres you climb in the final 3 kilometres.

How hot does it get with a noon start?

Hotter than the “mild Nordic spring” framing suggests, because the start time puts you in the warmest part of the day. Using SMHI hourly observations from the station about 1.5 km from the finish, across the 12:00-18:00 local window on 25 May to 5 June from 1997 to 2025 (29 seasons — the station's archive starts in October 1996), roughly one hour in four was 20°C or warmer and the warmest hour on record in that window was 29.8°C. Reality has matched, and the shape matters more than the peak: the station read 20.3°C at the 2026 start and 22.4°C an hour later — the organiser's own race report says the summer sun “pushed the temperature to 22 degrees and damped the participants' pace”, which is that 13:00 reading rather than the gun — and in 2024 it was 25.4°C at noon, peaking at 27.2°C at 15:00. You start in the cooler part of your own race and warm up from there. Practical response: train some sessions in the heat, set a heat-adjusted target with the Heat Pace Adjustment Calculator, and use the showers and running-water channels sited just before each hydration station.

Can I get a refund or transfer my entry?

Entry is binding and the organiser does not refund fees for non-participation. Their customer service states that the only route to a refund is having taken out Folksam's motionsloppsförsäkring (bas or stor), a Swedish domestic race insurance, with the claim handled by Folksam rather than the race — which in practice makes refunds a route open mainly to runners based in Sweden. Name changes do exist, and the organiser publishes two routes. It calls bytastartplats.se the easiest way, and the alternative is a name change made directly from your participant account at manage.marathongruppen.se, using the “Registration Options” button, entering the new runner's name and email and choosing whether you or they pay the fee. Either way the deadline is 10 days before the race, and the fee amount is not published. Do not confuse this with informally handing over a bib: the race rules state the bib is personal and may not be transferred to another runner, and the organiser explicitly warns against paying anyone outside those two routes.