The Comrades 2027 Ballot Opens Tomorrow at 10:00
The general ballot for the 100th Comrades Marathon opens at 10:00 SAST on Wednesday, 9 September 2026 and closes at 16:30 on Tuesday, 22 September. Roughly 14,500 of the 28,000 places go through this draw, open to South African, rest of Africa and international applicants. You do not need a qualifying marathon to apply, applying costs a non-refundable R10 tokenisation fee, and successful applicants pay the race entry fee after the draw on 23 September.
The short version
The general ballot for the 100th Comrades Marathon opens at 10:00 SAST on Wednesday, 9 September 2026. This is the window for everyone who is not a green or yellow number holder and not a CMA member, which means it is the window for most of us. It is open to South African, rest of Africa and international applicants alike.
Four dates carry the whole thing:
- Wednesday, 9 September, 10:00: applications open
- Tuesday, 22 September, 16:30: applications close
- Wednesday, 23 September: the draw, with results out immediately
- Sunday, 13 June 2027: the 100th Comrades, a down run from Pietermaritzburg City Hall to the Kings Park precinct in Durban
It is a ballot, so the 10:00 scramble is over
This is the part worth reading twice, because last year taught everyone the opposite lesson.
The 2026 race capped at 22,000 and sold out in under ten hours. People sat at keyboards with three tabs open. That memory is going to send a lot of runners into a panic on Wednesday morning, and the panic is misplaced.
The centenary general entry is a ballot, not a queue. Applying at 10:01 on Wednesday and applying at 16:00 on Tuesday the 22nd put you in exactly the same hat. There is no advantage to being early and no penalty for thinking about it over the weekend, so long as you are in before 16:30 on Tuesday, 22 September.
That is the whole point of the four-window structure the CMA set out when it launched the race: the scramble was moved into the early windows, and what is left for the rest of us is a draw. The CMA has said it plainly too, announcing the opening with the line that the process "is not first-come, first-served, and applying early does not give you an advantage".
What you should not do is leave it to the last afternoon and then discover the site is busy or that you are missing something the form wants. Two weeks is generous. Use the first few days of it.
You do not need a qualifier to apply
This one stops more people than it should.
You do not need a qualifying marathon in hand to enter the ballot. You need one by race day, and the deadline for having run it and submitted it is 3 May 2027.
The standard is a sub-5:00 standard marathon, run inside the qualifying window that opened on 15 June 2026, the day after the 2026 race, and closes on 3 May 2027.
So the honest order of operations is: apply now, and go and earn the qualifier over summer. If you wait until you have the marathon time before applying, the ballot will have closed seven months earlier.
Our Comrades qualifying calculator will tell you where a given marathon time puts you and which start batch it earns.
What it costs, and the deadline that bites
Entry fees have not moved since 2022:
- South Africa: R1,200
- Rest of Africa: R2,000
- Everywhere else: R4,500
Applying costs a non-refundable R10 tokenisation fee, payable when you submit. That is the card being registered rather than the entry being paid, and you do not get it back whether or not your name comes out.
The entry fee itself comes after the draw, and it does not collect itself. In the CMA's own words, successful applicants must pay the applicable fee within the prescribed payment period. So treat 23 September as the day you go and do something, not the day something happens to your card. Submitting an application does not guarantee an entry, and being drawn does not hold one for you indefinitely.
Then the bit that catches people. You can pay the entry in full, or pay 50% now and the balance by 31 January 2027. Miss that January deadline and you lose the entry and the money you already paid. If you take the split, put 31 January in your calendar the same day you take it.
Who is already in, and the other ways through
Roughly 52% of the 28,000 places, somewhere near 14,500 entries, go through this ballot. The rest were spoken for before Wednesday:
- Green and yellow number holders had their window from 25 to 31 August, first come first served.
- CMA members had theirs from 2 to 5 September.
- Charity entries through Amabeadibeadi opened on 25 August: 1,000 guaranteed places, each carrying a compulsory R10,000 contribution to the cause you run for. Guaranteed is the word doing the work there. If the ballot is a coin toss you would rather not flip, this is the way in that does not involve luck.
Two more worth knowing, because they are quiet and they are real money:
- The Comrades Relief Fund covers up to 1,500 disadvantaged South African athletes at half the entry fee.
- Runners with 25 or more Comrades medals pay nothing.
Now go and find the marathon that qualifies you
The ballot takes ten minutes. The qualifier takes a season, and that is the part people leave too late.
South Africa's marathon season peaks from October to December, which is the window most Comrades qualifiers get run in. That is soon, and the good races fill.
- Find a qualifying marathon and get it on the calendar before it sells out.
- Build the plan for it. Pick the race, set a goal time, tell us which days you can run, and you get a week by week schedule that tracks itself against your Strava runs.
If you are weighing up what to aim for on the day itself, the medal ladder is the honest place to start, and the official centenary training plans from coach Lindsey Parry are already published for every medal target.
Dates to diarise
- Wednesday, 9 September 2026, 10:00: general ballot opens
- Tuesday, 22 September 2026, 16:30: general ballot closes
- Wednesday, 23 September 2026: the draw, results immediately
- October to December 2026: SA marathon season, prime time for your qualifier
- Sunday, 31 January 2027: balance due if you paid half
- Monday, 3 May 2027: last day to have run and submitted your qualifier
- Sunday, 13 June 2027: the 100th Comrades Marathon
Wednesday, 9 September, 10:00 to Tuesday, 22 September, 16:30. It is a draw, not a race, so there is no reward for refreshing at ten in the morning. Put your name in, then go and find the marathon that qualifies you. Send this to the training partner who has been saying "one day" about the Comrades for years. One day is a hundred years old this time.
The window opens at 10:00 tomorrow morning and stays open for two weeks. You can apply on the Comrades website or through the Comrades Marathon app.
Apply for the ballot