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The biggest UK and Irish racing festivals are: the Cheltenham Festival (mid-March, jumps), the Grand National meeting at Aintree (early April, jumps), Royal Ascot (mid-June, flat), Glorious Goodwood (late July / early August, flat), the York Ebor Festival (late August, flat), and the St Leger Festival at Doncaster (mid-September, flat). Each runs over 3-5 days and showcases the year's top horses. Cheltenham and Royal Ascot draw the largest TV audiences; the Grand National is the single most-watched race in British sport.
The 2026 Cheltenham Festival runs from Tuesday 10 March to Friday 13 March 2026. Four championship races head the bill, one per day: Champion Hurdle (Tuesday), Queen Mother Champion Chase (Wednesday), Stayers' Hurdle (Thursday), and the Gold Cup (Friday). 28 races over the four days.
Royal Ascot 2026 runs from Tuesday 16 June to Saturday 20 June. Five days of flat racing including eight Group 1s — Queen Anne Stakes, Prince of Wales's Stakes, Gold Cup, Coronation Stakes, Commonwealth Cup, Diamond Jubilee Stakes, Sussex... and historically the social showpiece of the British flat season.
Royal Ascot has the biggest aggregate prize pool — over £9m across the five days. Cheltenham's Gold Cup alone is worth around £625,000 to the winner. The Grand National pays around £1m to its winner. The Derby at Epsom remains the single richest classic in Britain.
Every major festival has a dedicated landing page at /meetings/[id] with dates, blurb, race-by-race feature, and (for finished festivals) a recap of how the model performed. The headline races themselves get canonical pages at /big-races/[id] with recent winners, going preferences and field size patterns. The blog publishes deep-dive previews 7-14 days before each festival opens.
Racing Alpha is for information and entertainment for adults aged 18 and over. We do not accept bets. Past performance does not predict future results. BeGambleAware.org