# Irish Champions Festival 2026 Tips: Leopardstown and the Curragh _Irish Champions Festival 2026 tips: how to bet Leopardstown and the Curragh, the angles that repeat every year, and where each day's results land._ *Source: [https://stablebet.co.uk/racing-news/irish-champions-festival-tips/](https://stablebet.co.uk/racing-news/irish-champions-festival-tips/) · last updated 2026-09-12* ## The meeting in one screen **The Irish Champions Festival 2026 opens on Saturday 12 September 2026: two days, two courses, closing the Irish flat season at its championship peak.** Saturday is Leopardstown's day, Sunday belongs to the Curragh, and between them the weekend carries seven Group 1s and well over five million euro in prize money. This page sets out how to bet the two days, which races carry the money and why, and the angles that hold from one year to the next. On race days, the [AI Lab's morning card](/ai-race-predictor/today/) carries the model's read on every runner. Launched in 2014 as a deliberate end-of-summer championship meeting, the festival was built to give Ireland's own Group 1 season a single unmissable weekend rather than scattering its best races across the calendar. It has grown into one of the three must-watch European flat festivals alongside Royal Ascot and Glorious Goodwood, and it does it without the ceremony: this is a weekend about the horses, run by two of Ireland's best tracks back to back. **In this guide** - [Two days, two courses: the races that matter](#the-meeting) - [The Irish Champion Stakes and the Irish St Leger: what wins them](#the-feature-races) - [The angles that repeat: the O'Brien signal, the going, the two tracks](#angles-and-going) - [What publishes on race days, and where to bet](#tips-and-where-to-bet) For the full schedule, off-times and TV coverage see the [Irish Champions Festival 2026 race times hub](/racing-news/irish-champions-festival/). For the week's offers, [Irish Champions Festival betting offers](/bookmakers/irish-champions-festival-offers/). A word on what this page is and is not. The trends here narrow a field; they do not beat a bookmaker's margin on their own, and no page on this site will tell you otherwise. This page publishes no daily best bet. The AI Lab's predictions go up before the off and its [track record](/ai-race-predictor/track-record/) is published in full, so you can judge a record rather than anyone's confidence. ## Two days, two courses: the races that matter Two days, one at each course, and seven Group 1s that between them cover the middle-distance championship, the staying championship, the sprint championship and the leading juveniles of both sexes. The Golden Fleece Stakes at Leopardstown, for two-year-olds, was run as a Group 1 for the first time in 2026, which took the weekend from six Group 1s to seven. The table is the spine of the weekend; the notes under it are where the betting angle sits for each day. | Day | Course | Race | Grade | Trip | Who it is for | |---|---|---|---|---|---| | Saturday | Leopardstown | Irish Champion Stakes | Group 1 | 1m 2f | The season's middle-distance championship, 3yo+ | | Saturday | Leopardstown | Matron Stakes | Group 1 | 1m | Fillies and mares, milers | | Saturday | Leopardstown | Golden Fleece Stakes | Group 1 | 1m 1f | Two-year-olds | | Sunday | The Curragh | Irish St Leger | Group 1 | 1m 6f | Staying championship, 3yo+ | | Sunday | The Curragh | Flying Five Stakes | Group 1 | 5f | Sprint championship, 3yo+ | | Sunday | The Curragh | National Stakes | Group 1 | 7f | Leading two-year-old colts | | Sunday | The Curragh | Moyglare Stud Stakes | Group 1 | 7f | Leading two-year-old fillies | ### Saturday at Leopardstown: the Irish Champion Stakes This is the weekend's marquee race and Europe's leading middle-distance championship outside the Arc weekend: the Guineas, Derby and Eclipse form all converges here in September, so the field is usually the strongest the meeting sees all year. The angle is less about finding a price than about respecting the level: this is not a race where a stable's second string competes credibly, so a runner stepping up from Group 2 company needs a specific reason to be taken seriously, and the market at the top is usually well informed. The Matron Stakes on the same card is the fillies' equivalent over a mile, and rewards a filly who has already shown Group 1 form or something close to it over the trip. ### Sunday at the Curragh: the Irish St Leger and the juvenile Group 1s The Irish St Leger is Sunday's feature and Ireland's own staying championship over a mile and six, contested by horses fresh from the Cup form of the summer or stepping up in trip from a mile-and-a-half campaign. The same filters that decide Doncaster's St Leger, run the day before, apply here: proven stamina over the trip counts for more than raw class, and a horse that has never travelled this far needs a stronger case than hope. The Flying Five Stakes runs the same afternoon at the opposite extreme: a pure five-furlong sprint championship for three-year-olds and up, sitting neatly between the Nunthorpe at York and the Prix de l'Abbaye at Longchamp on the European sprint calendar, so the horses that turn up here often carry the season's best sprint form from either side of the Irish Sea. Run alongside those two, the National Stakes and the Moyglare Stud Stakes are the season's clearest form guides for the following spring's Guineas: both are contested by the leading juveniles of their sex over seven furlongs, and a strong form line here (a well-regarded yard, a taking style of victory, a step up from a Group 2 or 3) travels forward to the following year's Classic trials more reliably than almost any other juvenile form in Europe. ### Betting the whole weekend The Irish Champions Festival overlaps the closing days of Doncaster's St Leger Festival, which runs from the Thursday to the Sunday the same week: the Irish Champion Stakes falls on the same Saturday as Doncaster's own St Leger Stakes. If you are following both meetings, an account that treats UK and Irish racing on the same concessions saves the bother of switching between two sets of terms across a busy weekend: see the [where to bet](#tips-and-where-to-bet) section below. ## The Irish Champion Stakes and the Irish St Leger: what wins them The two Group 1s that carry the weekend's biggest markets ask different questions of a horse. The Irish Champion Stakes is a pure class test over ten furlongs against the best middle-distance horses in Europe; the Irish St Leger is a stamina test over a mile and six that most three-year-olds have never attempted. Both, in different ways, are dominated by one yard. ### Sunday at the Curragh: the card as declared The final day belongs to the Curragh. It carries four of the weekend's seven Group 1s, plus the Group 2 Blandford Stakes, on an eight-race card that opens with a sprint handicap at 1:45 and closes with the Northfields Handicap at 5:45. The going on our racecard when the fields were declared on Saturday evening was **Yielding**; it can change overnight, and the [Curragh racecard](/racecards/curragh/) carries the current description. | Off | Race | Grade | Trip | Declared | |-----|------|-------|------|----------| | 2:50 | Moyglare Stud Stakes (2yo fillies) | Group 1 | 7f | 7 | | 3:25 | Flying Five Stakes | Group 1 | 5f | 18 | | 4:00 | National Stakes (2yo) | Group 1 | 7f | 8 | | 4:35 | Irish St Leger | Group 1 | 1m6f | 7 | | 5:10 | Blandford Stakes (fillies and mares) | Group 2 | 1m2f | 10 | The fields below are as declared, with trainer and jockey. Prices move through the morning, so they are not printed here; the best price on every runner is on the racecard. **Moyglare Stud Stakes (2:50).** Alpha (Aidan O'Brien, Wayne Lordan), Ballinea Star (Robson De Aguiar, Donagh O'Connor), Controlla (Robson De Aguiar, David Egan), Dancing Destiny (Joseph O'Brien, Declan McDonogh), Green Empress (Joseph O'Brien, Colin Keane), Ibelieveicanfly (Aidan O'Brien, Ronan Whelan), Sun Goddess (Aidan O'Brien, Ryan Moore). **Flying Five Stakes (3:25).** American Affair (Jim Goldie, Daniel Tudhope), Argentine Tango (Tim Easterby, David Allan), Big Gossey (Charles O'Brien, W J Lee), Brussels (Aidan O'Brien, Wayne Lordan), Charles Darwin (Aidan O'Brien, Ronan Whelan), Comanche Brave (Donnacha O'Brien, Billy Loughnane), Cover Up (Simon & Ed Crisford, William Buick), Gazelle d'Or (M C Grassick, Colin Keane), Ipanema Queen (Robson De Aguiar, David Egan), Jakajaro (Robert Cowell, Jamie Spencer), Jm Jungle (John & Sean Quinn, Jason Hart), Mission Central (Aidan O'Brien, Ryan Moore), Night Raider (K R Burke, James Doyle), Partisan Hero (David Loughnane, Silvestre De Sousa), Rumstar (Jonathan Portman, Rob Hornby), Spicy Marg (Michael Bell, Tom Marquand), Starlust (Ralph Beckett, Rossa Ryan), Time For Sandals (Harry Eustace, Kieran Shoemark). Eleven of the eighteen are trained in Britain. **National Stakes (4:00).** Dr Rascal (Oliver Cole, Kaiya Fraser), Florida Bay (Aidan O'Brien, Ronan Whelan), Folsom Blues (Joseph O'Brien, J M Sheridan), Giant Sequoia (Aidan O'Brien, Ryan Moore), Haffner (Aidan O'Brien, Wayne Lordan), Monogram (Joseph O'Brien, Colin Keane), Porto Vecchio (D K Weld, Chris Hayes), Trean (P Twomey, W J Lee). **Irish St Leger (4:35).** Arabian Force (William Haggas, Tom Marquand), Jan Brueghel (Aidan O'Brien, Ronan Whelan), Leinster (Joseph O'Brien, J M Sheridan), Queenstown (Aidan O'Brien, Wayne Lordan), Scandinavia (Aidan O'Brien, Ryan Moore), Tennessee Stud (Joseph O'Brien, Colin Keane), Trustyourinstinct (Joseph O'Brien, Declan McDonogh). Six of the seven come from the two O'Brien yards, and two have already won the St Leger at Doncaster: Jan Brueghel in 2024 and Scandinavia in 2025. **Blandford Stakes (5:10).** Jennifer Jane (Charlie Johnston, Silvestre De Sousa), Lilt (William Haggas, Tom Marquand), Red Letter (G M Lyons, Colin Keane), Shaool (J P Murtagh, Ben Coen), Snapretend (Joseph O'Brien, Declan McDonogh), Spicy Margarita (Robson De Aguiar, David Egan), Symbol Of Majesty (John & Thady Gosden, William Buick), Thundering On (Joseph O'Brien, Ryan Moore), Timeforshowcasing (Charlie Johnston, Jack Mitchell), Wemightakedlongway (Joseph O'Brien, J M Sheridan). Spicy Margarita here and Spicy Marg in the Flying Five are two different horses. ### Irish Champion Stakes: recent winners The table is read from our source-verified race record, so what it shows is what the record holds and nothing more: where a starting price is blank, we have not verified it rather than guessed it. **Aidan O'Brien has won three of the last four runnings**, with Delacroix (2025), Auguste Rodin (2023) and Luxembourg (2022), and each was a three-year-old with Guineas or Derby form from earlier in the season, not an older campaigner. The one break in the run, Economics for William Haggas in 2024, was itself a three-year-old fresh off winning the Eclipse, so the pattern holds even in the exception: this is overwhelmingly a three-year-olds' race at the top, and the yard sending the strongest Classic form into September starts with an edge. Ballydoyle's dominance here is closer to structural than lucky (the string simply has more genuine Group 1 three-year-olds to choose from than any rival), which is worth remembering when the market prices an O'Brien runner as a short-priced favourite. Short does not mean wrong. ### Irish St Leger: recent winners **Kyprios won this race twice**, in 2022 and 2024, both times for Aidan O'Brien and Ryan Moore, and remains the benchmark for what an Irish St Leger horse looks like: a proven Cup-class stayer, not a Classic type stepping up in trip for the first time. Al Riffa's 2025 win for Joseph O'Brien keeps the race inside the wider O'Brien family even where it slips from the senior yard, and Eldar Eldarov's 2023 win for Roger Varian is the clearest recent example of an outside yard taking the race: a Leger winner at Doncaster the year before, arriving with the exact stamina proof this race demands. The read-through is consistent across all four years: proven form at the trip, or very close to it, beats a horse arriving on hope that the step up will suit. ### What the market gets right, and where the edge sits The honest summary for both races is that the market gets them mostly right: Group 1 fields this deep rarely hide a genuine outsider. Where an edge exists, it is in the same place for both: a horse with the exact proven form the race demands (Cup form for the Leger, top-level three-year-old form for the Champion Stakes) is worth backing even at a short price, and a horse without it is worth fading even at an attractive one, whatever yard it comes from. ## The angles that repeat: the O'Brien signal, the going, the two tracks Two different tracks in two days is the defining feature of this weekend, and the betting angles follow directly from what each one asks. ### Leopardstown, Saturday: a stiffer test than the trip suggests Leopardstown is a wide left-handed oval with a deceptively stiff three-furlong uphill run-in, and it is that climb to the line, not the trip on the racecard, that decides the Irish Champion Stakes and the Matron Stakes. A horse can travel well enough through the first mile and still find nothing under pressure on the rise; the profile that repeats is a proven battler rather than a pure galloper, and that matters more here than it would on a flatter track over the same distance. Watch how a fancied runner has finished its previous races, not just where: one that has picked up cleanly inside the final furlong travels the Leopardstown hill better than one that has needed to be niggled along from further out. ### The Curragh, Sunday: as fair as it gets, so the best horse usually wins The Curragh is widely regarded as one of the fairest tracks in the world: a galloping, right-handed horseshoe of about two miles with a straight three-furlong run-in that climbs only slightly. Our own course guide is direct about the draw here: the round courses are fair, and pace and position in the run count for more than the stall number. That cuts a specific way for betting: this is not a track where a poor draw excuses a beaten favourite, so when the well-fancied horse loses at the Curragh, the more useful question is usually about the horse's form or the pace of the race, not the stall it came from. ### The Ballydoyle signal, across the whole weekend Aidan O'Brien's yard does not just win the individual feature races (see the previous section); it typically fields the strongest hand across both days, and reading which of his runners the stable itself rates is often more informative than reading the market alone. Jockey bookings are the clearest public signal: when Ryan Moore is on a specific O'Brien runner rather than a stable companion at a bigger price, that booking is usually the yard's own verdict on which one it fancies most, and it is worth more than a formbook read of both horses' recent runs. ### The raiders, and what they do to the Ballydoyle signal The angle above still holds as a base rate, but the Irish Champion Stakes has been drawing a different kind of challenger, and that changes how much a short O'Brien price is worth taking on. At the 2026 entry stage the €1.25m Royal Bahrain Irish Champion Stakes took 48 entries, 18 of them winners at Group 1 level somewhere in the world, which Horse Racing Ireland called the strongest response the race had ever had at that point in its cycle. The names behind the number were not the usual European middle-distance pool. Forever Young had won two Saudi Cups either side of a Breeders' Cup Classic. Calandagan had topped the world's best racehorse rankings for 2025 after four straight Group 1s. Daryz, his stable companion in the Aga Khan Studs colours, held the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe. Ballydoyle's Classic winners were entered alongside that lot rather than in front of them, and John and Thady Gosden's Ombudsman and Ed Walker's Almaqam were in there too. The betting consequence is narrow. The Ballydoyle jockey-booking signal still tells you which of the O'Brien runners the yard fancies, and it is still the best free information on the card. What it no longer tells you is that the yard's first string beats the race, because the horse it has to beat may have arrived from Tokyo or Chantilly with a rating to match. Read the booking as a within-stable verdict and price the race off the whole field. Hold the entry stage loosely, though. Entries are a measure of a race's pull, not a field: a Group 1 of this standing takes dozens of nominations months out and runs a handful, and only the declarations settle who turns up. The Irish St Leger makes the same point from the other end. It is open to older horses, which is what separates it from Doncaster's three-year-olds-only Classic, and that one condition lets it attract entries no British Leger could take. In 2026 the €500,000 Comer Group International Irish St Leger drew 63 of them, including Constitution Hill, a champion hurdler. By the start of September the entry had gone quiet: he was declared instead for Kempton's Group 3 September Stakes on 5 September, and his trainer Nicky Henderson had said in August that going to Kempton "would stop us going to Ireland". Read a May entry list for what a race can attract, and wait for the declarations before you read it as a field. ### The going, and the weekend's other complication Irish tracks in September are usually good to good-to-firm rather than soft, and the going tends to matter less here than it does at a British autumn meeting: the bigger factor most years is whether a small, high-class field is truly run, not what the ground is doing. Check the official going report on the morning of each day rather than assuming from the week's weather, since a watered track can ride differently to the forecast. The other complication is scheduling, not the track: the Irish Champions Festival overlaps the closing days of Doncaster's St Leger Festival, and the Irish Champion Stakes falls on the same Saturday as Doncaster's own St Leger Stakes. If you are following both meetings across the weekend, that is worth planning for before the first race, not during it: see [where to bet](#tips-and-where-to-bet) below. ## What publishes on race days, and where to bet ### What this page publishes on race days, and what it does not This page does not carry a best bet of its own, so there is no selection or price here to settle. An earlier version of this section said a daily best bet would appear from the morning of each card. None was published, and that line has been taken out. What does publish on race days is our [AI Lab's morning card](/ai-race-predictor/today/). It goes up automatically on the morning of each meeting and shows, for every runner at Leopardstown and the Curragh, the price on offer, the bookmaker's margin built into it and the model's read next to the market's. That is the quickest way to see where the market and a cold read of the form disagree. The model does not reliably beat the starting price, and it is research, not a tip. The weekend's fields are declared. The Curragh's Sunday pattern races and their runners are set out in the feature-races section above, and the full cards, with every rider and the best price on each runner, are on our racecards for [Leopardstown](/racecards/leopardstown/) and [the Curragh](/racecards/curragh/). The angles in the previous section are the method for reading them. ### Where to bet on the Irish Champions Festival The money decisions for a two-day weekend across two courses are made before the first race, not during it. The week's [Irish Champions Festival betting offers](/bookmakers/irish-champions-festival-offers/) page compares what the bookmakers are offering for the meeting, and three things matter more than a headline free bet: - **Best Odds Guaranteed.** Seven Group 1s across two days means short-priced favourites whose prices move through the morning, so BOG pays more often over this weekend than a one-off free bet does. [Best Odds Guaranteed bookmakers](/bookmakers/best-bog-bookmakers/). - **Non-runner no bet, if you are betting ante-post.** A price taken before the fields are declared can be lost to a late defection, and NRNB is what gets the stake back if it is. [Best ante-post betting sites](/bookmakers/best-antepost-bookmakers-uk/). - **Extra places.** Away from the championship races themselves, the supporting handicaps at both tracks are where an extra place turns a marginal each-way bet into a fair one. For a wider view, [best free bet offers for horse racing](/bookmakers/best-free-bet-offers/) and [the best bookmakers for horse racing](/bookmakers/best-bookmakers-horse-racing/). ### After each day's racing Every day's finishing orders and starting prices land in the meeting's results hub each evening as the cards finish, and the [Irish Champions Festival hub](/festivals/irish-champions-festival/) links the current edition's hub along with the rest of the meeting's coverage. ### Responsible note A championship weekend across two courses on consecutive days invites chasing the one that got away. Set the weekend's stake before it starts and keep to it regardless of how Saturday goes. If betting stops being fun, [BeGambleAware](https://www.begambleaware.org) offers free, confidential support on 0808 8020 133. 18+, please gamble responsibly.