The dates of the Cheltenham Festival 2026 are Tuesday 10 March to Friday 13 March. Gates open at 10.30am each day, with the first race due off at 1.20pm and the last race at 5.20pm.

The Festival is an embarrassment of riches for racing fans with 12 Grade One races spread across the four days. In total there are 28 races held, with seven on each day. Those are split between 13 chases, 13 hurdles, plus one bumper (a National Hunt race without jumps) and the cross-country chase.

The most prestigious race at the meeting is Friday’s Cheltenham Gold Cup, which has been won by such iconic horses as Arkle, Golden Miller, Best Mate, Kauto Star and Denman. History was made in 2022 when Rachael Blackmore became the first female jockey to win the Gold Cup at the Cheltenham Festival on board A Plus Tard, trained by Henry de Bromhead and owned by Cheveley Park Stud.

Other top races held at the festival include the Champion Hurdle (Tuesday), the Queen Mother Champion Chase (Wednesday) and the Stayers’ Hurdle (Thursday).

The Cheltenham Festival also hosts the Festival Hunters’ Chase, formerly called the Foxhunter Chase, for amateur riders. Around the same course and distance as the Cheltenham Gold Cup, it typically follows the famous race on the final day of The Festival.

Ruby Walsh has ridden 59 winners at the Cheltenham Festival and was crowned leading jockey at the Festival on 11 occasions between 2004 and 2017 before retiring in 2019. On two occasions he set the record of riding seven winners across the four-day Festival, the first time in 2009 and again in 2016.

Rachael Blackmore became the first female jockey to claim the leading jockey award at the Festival after riding six winners in 2021. In 2022 she added becoming the first female jockey to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup and the Champion Hurdle and to her outstanding list of career highlights.

Golden Miller holds the record for winning the most Cheltenham Gold Cups. He won the race five years in a row, from 1932 to 1936, and in 1934 he became the only horse ever to win the Grand National at Aintree and the Gold Cup in the same season.

Cottage Rake (1948-1950), Arkle (1963-1965) and Best Mate (2002-2004) all won the race three times in consecutive years, claiming their place in the history books.

W A Baring Bingham purchased the Prestbury Park area where the racecourse sits, in 1881, with the intention of turning it into a stud farm, before realising there was an appetite for horseracing in the area.

As a result, he decided to host a race meeting in 1898 — it proved popular enough to host more racing there the following year, and it continued to grow in popularity until, in 1902, it played host to a National Hunt Festival in mid-April.

Two years later the National Hunt Chase was moved to Prestbury Park for successive years, having first run at Market Harborough in 1860, and in 1911 Cheltenham Racecourse became the race’s permanent home.

The 1911 running of this fixture was classed as the first Cheltenham Festival as we think of it today.

Learn more about the Cheltenham Festival’s history