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They call the Cheltenham Festival the ‘Olympics of jumps racing’ for a reason. Nothing else in the calendar matches its buzz or spectacle.
Each March, all eyes turn to Cheltenham as the finest jumps horses from Britain, Ireland and France gather to compete for the sport’s biggest honours.
Cheltenham Festival will be back from 10–13 March 2026. With excitement already building, here are 10 fascinating facts to get you in the spirit
Prizes and Their Winners
1. Prize money at the Cheltenham Festival tallied more than £1m per-day for the first time in 2019
The overall purse across four days reached over £4.5m, and the amount got even bigger in subsequent years. After record-breaking prizes last year, organisers raised the bar even higher for this year’s Festival.
The 2025 Cheltenham Festival broke records with prize money hitting £4.93 million – a £115,000 boost on the year before.
Once again, the biggest payday came in the Gold Cup, with the winner pocketing the lion’s share of the £625,000 prize fund.
Here’s the Cheltenham Festival 2025 prize money per race:
- Supreme Novices’ Hurdle – £150,000
- Arkle Novices’ Chase – £200,000
- Ultima Handicap Chase – £150,000
- Mares’ Hurdle – £120,000
- Champion Hurdle – £450,000
- Juvenile Handicap Hurdle – £80,000
- National Hunt Chase – £200,000
- Turners Novices’ Hurdle – £200,000
- Brown Advisory Novices’ Chase – £200,000
- Coral Cup Hurdle – £100,000
- Cross Country Steeple Chase – £75,000
- Queen Mother Steeple Chase – £400,000
- Grand Annual Steeple Chase Challenge Cup – £150,000
- Champion Bumper – £80,000
- Mares’ Novices’ Hurdle – £105,000
- Jack Richards Novices’ Limited Handicap Chase – £125,000
- Pertemps Network Final – £100,000
- Ryanair Steeple Chase – £375,000
- Stayers’ Hurdle – £325,000
- TrustATrader Plate Handicap Chase – £150,000
- Fulke Walwyn Kim Muir Challenge Cup – £75,000
- Triumph Hurdle – £150,000
- County Handicap Hurdle – £98,370
- Mrs Paddy Power Mares’ Steeple Chase – £120,000
- Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle – £150,000
- Cheltenham Gold Cup – £625,000
- Festival Hunters Chase – £50,000
- Martin Pipe Conditional Jockeys Handicap Hurdle – £75,000
2. Ruby Walsh is the all-time most successful rider at the Cheltenham Festival having retired in 2019 with 63 winners on his CV
The Irishman was crowned leading rider at the meeting a whopping 11 times, starring for both Paul Nicholls and Willie Mullins in his storybook career.
Gold Cup wins on Kauto Star (2007 & 2009) and Champion Hurdles on Hurricane Fly (2011 & 2013) rate highly, but Walsh admits Annie Power’s redemptive success in the 2016 Champion Hurdle was one of his most satisfying Cotswolds successes ever.
3. Willie Mullins has trained more Cheltenham Festival winners than anyone else
The Irish supremo took his tally to a majestic 78 winners in 2021, with Allaho’s Ryanair Chase and Appreciate It scoring in the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle his highlights.
For many years the Gold Cup eluded Mullins, but Al Boum Photo changed that in 2019 and retained the crown in 2020.
The Queen Mother Champion Chase is the only piece of the Cheltenham Championship jigsaw missing from Mullins’ collection now.
4. There are two courses at Cheltenham – The Old Course and The New Course
The former is used for the first two days of The Festival before switching to the New Course – generally considered to be a more daunting stamina test, though neither are easy.
12,320 yards of running rails surrounding the tracks while 5,000 bundles of birch are used every season on the Cheltenham fences.
Records and Their Setters
5. The first female jockey to win a Grade 1 race during The Festival was Katie Walsh in 2018
She won the Champion Bumper on the Willie Mullins-trained mare Relegate. Bryony Frost (Frodon, Ryanair Chase, 2019) matched that feat, while Racheal Blackmore joined them the same year, winning Albert Bartlett on Minella Indo.
In 2021, Blackmore re-wrote the history books with six Festival winners – including the Champion Hurdle on outstanding mare Honeysuckle – as she was crowned leading rider at the Cheltenham Festival.
6. Quevega’s six wins in the Mares’ Hurdle from 2009-2014 ensure she is the horse with the most Festival wins
This eclipsed Golden Miller’s tally of five – all in the Gold Cup – which was achieved from 1932-1936.
Honourable mention too for Big Buck’s, the winner of four Stayers’ Hurdles from 2009-2012.
7. Kauto Star is the only horse ever to regain the Cheltenham Gold Cup
He won in 2007, before finishing second to his Paul Nicholls-trained stablemate Denman in a bruising ’08 renewal.
Their iconic rivalry transcended racing and in 2009 ‘King Kauto’ took his crown back, with Denman this time the bridesmaid.
People and Produce
8. The Cheltenham Festival draws more than a quarter of a million people to the Gloucestershire town each spring
With an average attendance of over 65,000 per day, 134,600 people use the Cheltenham Spa train station over the four days. 80,000 also use the shuttle bus service between Cheltenham Racecourse and the town centre, with 36,500 vehicles parked over the four days and more than 100 helicopters on site per day.
There are 50 coaches in use per day for staff alone, while an extra 30 flights are scheduled from Dublin into Birmingham during The Festival to cover the visiting Irish racegoers.
9. With that volume of visitors, food and drink is a vital commodity
According to organisers the Jockey Club the Cheltenham catering team go through the following at an average Festival:
- 45,000 bread rolls
- 8,000+ gallons of tea and coffee served
- 350 chefs on site
- 9 tons of potatoes consumed
- 5 tons of smoked and fresh salmon consumed
- 3,800 catering team operating the event each day
- 500 students from over 14 colleges work at The Festival
- 8 furlongs (a mile!) of temporary bar counters
- 24 marquees including the longest triple-deck structure in Europe, with over 2.5 miles of internal walls
10. Watching the best jumps horses strut their stuff can be thirsty work
Punters at Cheltenham are always keen to stay hydrated. Racegoers were tipped to drink nearly 50% more Guinness at the 2025 Festival than they did a year earlier — roughly 380,000 pints. That’s a huge jump from 265,000 in 2024, setting up one of the thirstiest Cheltenhams on record..
