The Irish Grand National: Race Guide

The Irish Grand National is a handicap steeplechase, and that word handicap matters. Unlike a weight-for-age Grade 1, where the best horse usually carries a weight close to its rivals, a handicap asks the official handicapper to give each runner a burden calculated to bring the whole field together at the line. The better the form, the more weight a horse shoulders. That is why the National throws up the results it does, from short-priced favourites to genuine outsiders, and why it has produced some of the most celebrated weight-carrying performances in the sport.

Distance, fences and conditions

The race is run over about 3 miles 5 furlongs, which is 5,834 metres, taking in 24 fences over two full circuits of the chase course. It is open to horses aged five and older. The distance settled at 3m5f in 1991, having been 3 miles 4 furlongs before then, which is one reason cross-era time comparisons are not meaningful: the trip itself changed, and winning times swing enormously with the ground.

The field is capped at a maximum of 30 runners, and the race regularly fills that cap. It is a stiff, demanding test. The chase course at Fairyhouse climbs steadily on the far side away from the stands to its highest point, the rise known as Ballyhack, then runs downhill through the back straight before a slightly uphill finish. The run-in from the last fence is short, around a furlong, so a tired horse cannot afford to be too far off the lead at the final obstacle even with the climb still to come.

Going and attrition

Spring at Fairyhouse can be wet, and the Easter Festival has more than once been run on soft or heavy ground. When the going turns testing, the 3m5f trip becomes a war of attrition. The 2025 running is a clear example: 30 runners set out on soft-to-heavy ground and only 15 completed the course. That same renewal, won by Haiti Couleurs, was timed at 8 minutes 11.80 seconds, a figure that gives a sense of the slog on bad ground rather than any kind of record.

Status and prize money

The Irish Grand National is classified as a premier handicap, a Grade A handicap in the Irish system and roughly a Grade 3 handicap in the international Pattern. It is not a Group or Pattern race in the championship sense, but it is the most prestigious and historically the most valuable steeplechase in Ireland. The prize fund was nearly doubled to around €500,000 in 2017, and Horse Racing Ireland's 2026 facts sheet lists a total fund of €500,000 with €275,000 to the winner. It has been sponsored by BoyleSports since 2014, following long associations with Irish Distillers whiskey brands such as Powers and Jameson up to 2010, and then Ladbrokes from 2011 to 2013.

Racing at Fairyhouse predates the National by more than two decades. The first meeting on the present site was a point-to-point run by the Ward Union Hunt in 1848, and within roughly ten years the venue had grown into a full National Hunt racecourse. The Ward Union connection ran deep: the course hosted Fingal and Ward Union point-to-points for generations, with the last Ward Union fixture at the venue in 1995, and point-to-pointing returned to an inner track in 2014.

1870: the first running

The inaugural Irish Grand National was run at Fairyhouse in 1870 and won by a horse named Sir Robert Peel, whose connections collected 167 sovereigns. The timing was no accident. The Irish National Hunt Steeplechase Committee had been formed in 1869, and although some accounts trace the wider Irish steeplechasing tradition back to the Curragh before it settled at Fairyhouse, the race quickly became the most valuable and prestigious staying chase in the country. Across the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the roll of honour gathered names that still mean something, from the dual winner Scots Grey in the 1870s to Ascetic's Silver, who took the 1904 National and then went on to win the Aintree Grand National in 1906.

The years it was not run

The Irish Grand National has been a near-constant since 1870, but it has failed to take place on three occasions, each tied to events well beyond racing. It was lost in 1919 to the Irish War of Independence, in 1941 to foot-and-mouth disease, and in 2020 to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2021 running, won by the 150/1 outsider Freewheelin Dylan, took place behind closed doors as the pandemic still kept crowds away.

Modern ownership and the course today

For much of its modern history the course was owned and operated by Fairyhouse Club Ltd. In 2007, after that company ran into financial difficulty, Fairyhouse passed to Horse Racing Ireland and is now run by HRI Racecourses, the same arm that operates Leopardstown, Navan and Tipperary. The most significant recent building work came in 1999, when the new Powers Gold Label Stand and the refurbished Jameson Stand were opened, a modernisation HRI regards as a turning point for the venue. The course was named HRI Racecourse of the Year at the December 2024 awards, a recognition the long-serving general manager Peter Roe, who ran Fairyhouse from 2010 until his final raceday in early 2025, picked out as a personal highlight.

A handicap over 3m5f around a stiff Irish track is a hard race to win once. The horses who have dominated it, or who used it as a stepping stone to greatness elsewhere, make up one of the richest rolls of honour in jumps racing.

The Dreaper dynasty and the immortals

No discussion of the Irish Grand National can start anywhere but with Tom Dreaper. He is the most successful trainer in the race's history with ten wins, including a remarkable seven in a row from 1960 to 1966: Olympia (1960), Fortria (1961), Kerforo (1962), Last Link (1963), Arkle (1964), Splash (1965) and Flyingbolt (1966), on top of earlier wins with Prince Regent (1942), Shagreen (1949) and Royal Approach (1954). Prince Regent later won the 1946 Cheltenham Gold Cup, underlining the quality of horse Dreaper was sending out at Fairyhouse.

Two of that Dreaper run are among the best chasers ever to race. Arkle, widely regarded as the greatest steeplechaser of all time and the highest-rated chaser in Timeform's history, won the 1964 National carrying 12st under Pat Taaffe, one stop on a career that delivered three Cheltenham Gold Cups from 1964 to 1966. His stablemate Flyingbolt, rated by Timeform as the second-best chaser of all time, won the 1966 running. Carrying 12st to victory in a competitive handicap, as Arkle did, is the measure of a top-class horse.

Brown Lad, the course specialist

The horse most closely associated with the race itself is Brown Lad, the only three-time winner of the Irish Grand National, successful in 1975, 1976 and 1978 for Tom's son Jim Dreaper. He carried 12st 2lb to victory and stands as the most successful horse in the race's history, the definitive Fairyhouse course specialist. Between them, father and son Dreaper trained 14 Irish Grand National winners, Jim's four including Colebridge in 1974 alongside the Brown Lad treble.

The weight-carriers and the grey

Carrying top weight to victory in a handicap is the hardest feat in the game, and the National has a proud list of horses who managed it. Desert Orchid, the beloved grey, won the 1990 running under Richard Dunwoody for David Elsworth with top weight on his back, one of the race's most memorable afternoons. Flashing Steel (1995) was the last top-weight winner, carrying 12st. These performances are why the race is remembered as a test of class as much as a lottery.

Springboards to Aintree

Time and again the Irish Grand National has been a stepping stone to the Aintree Grand National. Bobbyjo won at Fairyhouse in 1998, trained by Tommy Carberry and ridden by his son Paul, then took the 1999 Aintree National; a Fairyhouse function room and the Bobbyjo Chase are named in his honour. Numbersixvalverde won the 2005 Irish National for Martin Brassil and Ruby Walsh, then the 2006 Aintree National. More recently, I Am Maximus won the 2023 Irish National for Willie Mullins and Paul Townend before landing the 2024 Aintree Grand National for owner JP McManus.

Recent winners

The modern leaderboard is dominated by the two giants of Irish jumps training, Willie Mullins and Gordon Elliott, though the race still springs surprises.

Year	Winner	SP	Trainer	Jockey
2025	Haiti Couleurs	13/2	Rebecca Curtis	Sean Bowen
2024	Intense Raffles	13/2	Thomas Gibney	J. J. Slevin
2023	I Am Maximus	8/1	Willie Mullins	Paul Townend
2022	Lord Lariat	40/1	Dermot McLoughlin	P. J. O'Hanlon
2021	Freewheelin Dylan	150/1	Dermot McLoughlin	Ricky Doyle
2019	Burrows Saint	6/1 fav	Willie Mullins	Ruby Walsh
2018	General Principle	20/1	Gordon Elliott	J. J. Slevin
2017	Our Duke	9/2 fav	Jessica Harrington	Robbie Power

The 2025 winner Haiti Couleurs, trained in Pembrokeshire by Rebecca Curtis and ridden by Sean Bowen, was the first British or Welsh-trained winner in over a decade, beating Any Second Now by just over three lengths. Freewheelin Dylan's 150/1 success in 2021 is the longest-priced win in the race's history. Note the spread of starting prices in that table, from short-priced favourites to a 40/1 and a 150/1 shot. Pat Taaffe remains the leading rider with six wins, while the Carberry and Walsh families are woven all through the story: Ann Ferris was the first female rider to win, on Bentom Boy in 1984, and Nina Carberry (Organisedconfusion, 2011) and Katie Walsh (Thunder And Roses, 2015) have since followed.

The Irish Grand National has been a Dublin institution for so long that it earned its own nickname. The Easter Monday fixture is the "Dubs' Day Out", the day the capital decamps to County Meath, and it remains one of the biggest crowd events in Irish racing. The combination of a bank holiday, the end of a long weekend and the country's most famous steeplechase pulls in a crowd that mixes serious racegoers with families and once-a-year punters, the kind of mass appeal few sporting days in Ireland can match.

The three-day Easter Festival

The National does not stand alone. It is the climax of a three-day Easter Festival that, for 2026, runs from Saturday 4 April to Monday 6 April, with the Irish Grand National itself on Easter Monday off a scheduled time around 5pm. Each day has its own character. The Saturday is Style Day and Ladies Day. Easter Sunday is Family Fun Day, and it carries serious racing too, with the Grade 1 WillowWarm Gold Cup and the Grade 1 Irish Stallion Farms EBF Honeysuckle Mares Novice Hurdle, plus a €100,000 Tattersalls bumper. Easter Monday is Irish Grand National Day. Across the three days the festival puts up over €1.25 million in prize money.

Where it sits in the season

The festival has a clear place in the spring jumps calendar. It falls between the Cheltenham Festival in March and Aintree in early April, and it regularly draws horses fresh from Cheltenham. In both 2025 and 2026 the Irish National was run before the Aintree Grand National, which is part of why so many Irish National winners have gone on to Aintree glory, as Bobbyjo, Numbersixvalverde and I Am Maximus all did.

A day out, not just a race

The course leans into the occasion. There is a large outdoor playground and the indoor Fairyhouse Kids Club, free children's entertainment on Easter Sunday and a La Bucca Easter Bonnet competition, all of which mark the festival out as a family event as much as a betting one. The Bobbyjo Bistro overlooks the parade ring, a suite-level restaurant looks down on the finish, and a festival marquee carries live music. The crowd that gathers, dressed up for Ladies Day or down for a family afternoon, is the human side of a race whose television reach stretched to a peak of 333,000 on RTÉ in 2025. It is genuinely a national event, watched by far more people than the roughly 16,000 the course can hold.

Most people who watch the Irish Grand National do so from home, and the broadcast picture is straightforward once you know where to look.

On television and online

In Ireland the race is shown live on RTÉ, the national broadcaster, which retains terrestrial rights to Irish racing and has carried the National on RTÉ2. That is the route the bulk of the audience takes, and it is how the 2025 running reached a peak of 333,000 viewers. RTÉ Player carries the coverage online within Ireland.

For dedicated racing coverage, in Ireland and the UK alike, Fairyhouse is a Racing TV course. Racecourse Media Group's Racing TV holds the exclusive media rights to broadcast from all Irish racecourses under a deal reported to run until at least 2029, and the 2025 Irish Grand National was promoted as live on the channel. Racing TV streams through its app and the Racing TV Extra service, and replays are widely available afterwards. One point of clarification: Sky Sports Racing's coverage in Ireland is of British racing, so for Fairyhouse it is Racing TV rather than Sky Sports Racing that carries the pictures in the racing-channel context. The Winter Festival Grade 1s are shown on Racing TV too.

Getting there in person

If you would rather be on course, Fairyhouse is about 23 to 25km from Dublin city centre, typically around 30 minutes by road, though you should allow extra time on busy festival days. The course sits just off the M3, with Exit 5 for Ratoath and Fairyhouse leading onto the R155. There is free on-site parking, including 10 wheelchair spaces. By public transport, the 105 Bus Éireann service stops outside the racecourse, and on some racedays a special service runs from Dublin's central bus station. The nearest train station is M3 Parkway, about 7km away on the line from Dublin Connolly, with a complimentary shuttle bus running from there for the Easter and Winter Festivals. Dublin Airport is roughly 20 minutes away.

A word on betting

The Irish Grand National is one of the biggest betting races in the Irish calendar, and it is worth being clear-eyed about that. This guide carries no tips. Over time, backing favourites loses money to starting price, and Fairyhouse is no exception: clear favourites over a multi-year jumps sample have won a fair share of races but still returned a loss to level stakes, and handicap favourites in particular have tended to underperform what the market expects of them. The race itself proves the point, with winners ranging from 9/2 favourites to a 150/1 outsider in Freewheelin Dylan. No bet type, selection method or favourite is profitable as a rule, so treat any stake as the price of the entertainment rather than an investment. Our betting guide for Fairyhouse sets out the same honest picture in more detail. Enjoy the race for what it is, one of the great spectacles of the jumps season.