Curragh Racecourse

Ireland's headquarters of Flat racing and the home of the Irish Classics.

The Curragh is the spiritual home of Irish Flat racing, set on a vast open grassland plain in Co. Kildare, close to Newbridge and Kildare town. Regarded as Ireland's headquarters for the code, it sits at the centre of the country's thoroughbred breeding and training industry and hosts all five Irish Classics: the Irish 2,000 Guineas, Irish 1,000 Guineas, Irish Derby, Irish Oaks and Irish St Leger. The track is a right-handed, broadly horseshoe-shaped galloping circuit of roughly two miles, with a one-mile straight chute and a testing uphill finish that suits genuine, top-class horses. Its signature meeting is the Irish Derby Festival, run over three days in late June or early July. A €81 million redevelopment completed in 2019 delivered a new grandstand and modernised facilities.