The Listowel Harvest Festival: A Complete Guide

When and Where

The 2026 Listowel Harvest Festival runs from Sunday 20 to Saturday 26 September, seven consecutive days of racing confirmed by the official listowelraces.ie booking pages and Horse Racing Ireland. Seven days makes it Ireland's joint-longest race meeting alongside Galway, a distinction it has held since the festival stretched to a full week in 2002. The €200,000 Grade 3 Guinness Kerry National anchors the Wednesday, Ladies Day fills the Friday, and in recent years the Monday and Tuesday have been all-Flat cards with National Hunt racing on the other five days. The full day-by-day rhythm is covered in the seven days. Dates for 2027 have not been published yet; expect late September, but treat anything more specific as guesswork until the course confirms.

The venue is Listowel Racecourse at The Island, Co. Kerry, a low-lying strip of land between the River Feale and the town, a short walk from the square. Full track and facilities detail lives in our Listowel racecourse guide; the essentials for festival week are simple enough. Listowel sits on the N69 about 25km north-east of Tralee, 80km from Limerick and roughly 110km from Cork. There is no railway station in the town: the nearest is Tralee, about half an hour away by road, with regular services from Dublin Heuston and special bus links to Listowel during the festival. Kerry Airport is also around a half-hour drive.

On tickets, the official 2026 prices sit behind a booking widget, so confirm on listowelraces.ie before you buy. The course's own attractions page lists daily admission at €20 for Sunday to Tuesday and €25 for Wednesday to Saturday, with €5 off all general tickets booked online (full price applies at the gate). A seven-day festival badge has been sold in advance for about €100, billed in past festival guides as seven days for the price of five. Groups of 20 or more get 20% off. If you are only coming for one day, Wednesday's Kerry National and Friday's Ladies Day are the two that sell hardest, so book those early.

The Seven Days

The 2026 Harvest Festival runs Sunday 20 to Saturday 26 September, seven consecutive days, which makes Listowel Ireland's joint-longest race meeting alongside the Galway Races. The week has a settled rhythm: jumps bookend it, the Flat takes over early on, and the prize money builds towards midweek. One caveat before the day-by-day: the code split below is the established recent pattern from 2024 and 2025, and the allocation of features can shift year to year.

Sunday opens as Family Day, a National Hunt card headlined by the Kerry Dairy Ireland Handicap Chase, worth EUR45,000 (branded the Kerry Group Handicap Chase in 2023 and 2024).

Monday and Tuesday switch codes entirely. In both 2024 and 2025 these were all-Flat cards, Monday built around the EUR45,000 John McGuire Handicap and Tuesday around the Listed Edmond & Josie Whelan Memorial Listowel Stakes over a mile. The Flat days draw serious yards: Aidan O'Brien and Joseph O'Brien routinely target them, and the 2019 Monday mile maiden was won by Santiago, a subsequent Irish Derby winner.

Wednesday is the week's summit. The EUR200,000 Guinness Kerry National, a Grade 3 handicap chase over 3 miles (officially recorded as 2m7f180y), is Ireland's most valuable handicap chase and the reason many make the trip. It gets its own section in the Kerry National.

Thursday stays over jumps with the Lartigue Hurdle, a EUR60,000 Listed handicap hurdle for four-year-olds over 2 miles, named after the town's historic monorail.

Friday is Ladies Day, by far the busiest day of the week, with a 28,000 crowd in 2025. The racing feature is the Listed William Hill Handicap Hurdle, worth EUR100,000; the fashion side is covered in the other features and Ladies Day.

Saturday closes the festival with Sustainable Style Saturday and the EUR50,000 Charlie Chute Memorial Handicap Chase.

Across the seven days of 2025 the festival drew a confirmed 99,610 racegoers, up 4% on 2024's 96,046, so expect the second half of the week, Wednesday through Friday especially, to be the crowded end.

Day	Code	Headline
Sunday 20 Sept	National Hunt	Kerry Dairy Ireland Handicap Chase (EUR45,000)
Monday 21 Sept	Flat	John McGuire Handicap (EUR45,000)
Tuesday 22 Sept	Flat	Listowel Stakes (Listed)
Wednesday 23 Sept	National Hunt	Guinness Kerry National (Grade 3, EUR200,000)
Thursday 24 Sept	National Hunt	Lartigue Hurdle (Listed, EUR60,000)
Friday 25 Sept	National Hunt	William Hill Handicap Hurdle (Listed, EUR100,000), Ladies Day
Saturday 26 Sept	National Hunt	Charlie Chute Memorial Handicap Chase (EUR50,000)

Code split shown is the 2024 and 2025 pattern; confirm the 2026 cards nearer the meeting.

The Kerry National

The Guinness Kerry National is the race the whole week builds towards. Run on the Wednesday of the festival, it is a EUR200,000 Grade 3 handicap chase over 3 miles (officially recorded as 2m7f180y) and Ireland's most valuable handicap chase. The winner collects EUR120,000. Sponsored by Guinness through Diageo Ireland, it was classified "Grade A" under the older Irish labels before the switch to Grade 3, and it has been the centrepiece of Listowel since its first running in 1945, when the 13-year-old Star Of Venosas won for trainer Henry Harty and his son Harry. It goes off in late afternoon, around 4:20pm in recent years, as the highlight of the seven-day programme.

The recent roll of honour is a who's who of Irish jumping. Spanish Harlem (Willie Mullins, Danny Mullins, 16/1) took the 2025 renewal by four and a half lengths from Three Card Brag in an 18-runner field. The 2024 winner was Flooring Porter (Gavin Cromwell, Keith Donoghue, 6/1), already a dual Cheltenham Stayers' Hurdle hero. Before them came Desertmore House (2023, Martin Brassil, Ricky Doyle, 11/1), then back-to-back wins for Joseph O'Brien with Busselton (2022, J J Slevin, 13/2) and Assemble (2021, S Fitzgerald, 9/1). Cabaret Queen (2020, Willie Mullins, Paul Townend, 6/1) and Poker Party (2019, Henry de Bromhead, Rachael Blackmore, 14/1) preceded Snow Falcon (2018, Noel Meade, J Moore, 6/1). Gordon Elliott and jockey Lisa O'Neill won consecutive runnings with Potters Point (2017, 8/1) and Wrath Of Titans (2016, 7/1), completing three straight victories for owners Gigginstown House Stud that began with Rogue Angel (2015, Mouse Morris, Ger Fox, 8/1). Winning prices from 6/1 to 16/1 across that decade tell you how open a handicap this is: no angle makes it a paying puzzle.

The race has a habit of pointing towards Aintree. Monty's Pass won the 2002 Kerry National for Jimmy Mangan and Barry Geraghty at 9/1, then won the 2003 Aintree Grand National by 12 lengths, backed from 40/1 to 16/1 in a plunge that reportedly landed owner Mike Futter's Dee Racing Syndicate over £1 million. Rogue Angel went on to win the 2016 Irish Grand National for Mouse Morris. And Spanish Harlem carries his own Aintree subplot: his owner, Dr Peter Fitzgerald, is behind Randox, the Grand National's sponsor, and Willie Mullins named the Munster National and the Coral Gold Cup as possible stepping stones after Listowel.

The Kerry National is the week's only Graded race, but it is far from the only valuable prize: the Listed supporting features are covered in the other features and Ladies Day.

The Other Features and Ladies Day

The Kerry National is the festival's only Graded race, but three more contests carry Listed status, and each anchors its own day of the week.

The Edmond and Josie Whelan Memorial Listowel Stakes is the pick of the Flat racing, a Listed mile run on the Tuesday, worth €37,500 in 2023 and €40,000 in 2024. The big Flat yards take these cards seriously: the 2019 mile maiden on the Monday went to Santiago, who went on to win the Irish Derby.

Thursday belongs to the Lartigue Hurdle, a €60,000 Listed handicap over 2 miles for four-year-olds, carrying the name of the Listowel Races Supporters Club and run in memory of former club chairman John Molyneaux and previously named for the racing photographer Liam Healy. The race itself takes its name from the Lartigue Monorail, the town's curious heritage railway.

Friday's William Hill Handicap Hurdle completes the black-type roster: a Listed 2-mile handicap for five-year-olds and up worth €100,000 guaranteed, with around €59,000 to the winner. It ran under the MCG banner in 2024.

Around those sit the week's valuable handicaps: the Kerry Dairy Ireland Handicap Chase (€45,000) opens proceedings on Family Day Sunday, the John McGuire Handicap (€45,000) headlines Monday's all-Flat card, and the Charlie Chute Memorial Handicap Chase (€50,000) closes the meeting on Saturday. The allocation of features to days can shift a little year to year, so treat this as the established recent pattern.

Ladies Day

Friday is the biggest day of the whole week, bigger even than Kerry National Wednesday. The 2025 Ladies Day crowd was 28,000, and the 2024 figure was reported as nearly 29,000.

The centrepiece is the McElligotts Kia Best Dressed Lady competition, which McElligotts has backed for several years with Kia Ireland as co-sponsor. In 2025 it was judged by broadcaster Louise Duffy alongside designer Shauna Courtney, with a trip for two to New York, staying at the Fitzpatrick Hotel in Manhattan, as the top prize, plus €1,000 for the most creative headpiece and €500 for the most contemporary outfit. Ten finalists each received gift bags from McGuires Pharmacy Listowel.

Fashion runs right through the week: Best Dressed Couple on Sunday, fancy dress and a best-dressed under-25s award on Tuesday, the Ryles Best Dressed Man on Thursday (a €1,200 custom suit heads a prize fund of around €2,000) and the Sustainable Style Competition on the closing Saturday. How all seven cards fit together is covered in the seven days.

Atmosphere and Heritage

Listowel's racing grew out of the old Ballyeigh gathering of games, racing and faction fights, which moved to the town in 1858, and the September meeting became the week when Kerry farmers came to town to spend, or gamble, the proceeds of the harvest, and that rhythm still shapes the festival: it is the last major Flat and jumps festival of the Irish summer, the far end of a Kerry season that opens with the Killarney July Festival. The meeting has grown steadily rather than suddenly, from two days to four in 1970, five in 1977, and finally seven in 2002, which made it Ireland's joint-longest race meeting alongside Galway.

The setting is part of the character. The course sits on low-lying land between the River Feale and the town, and locals call it "the Island" because two of its three entrances are reached by bridge across the Feale. The course is only about a kilometre from the town centre, an easy walk, which is why the festival belongs to the whole town rather than just the racecourse. Listowel is a designated Heritage Town, styled the Literary Capital of Ireland by its writers' festival, and the home of playwright John B. Keane, whose pub remains a landmark and whose line "Listowel Races is a state of mind" is quoted every September. The Wednesday card even carries a John B. Keane Beginners Chase alongside the Kerry National.

The scale backs up the sentiment. The 2025 festival drew a confirmed 99,610 racegoers across the week, up 4% on 2024's 96,046, with 28,000 on the Friday for Ladies Day. Course director Pat Healy put the week's value to the north Kerry economy at around €14 million.

One honest note on the betting side of the heritage: the harvest-money tradition is romantic, but the arithmetic has not changed since 1858. Backing favourites blindly loses money to starting price over time, and no system is profitable in the long run, so treat a punt at Listowel as part of the entertainment budget. If you do intend to bet during the week, compare the current bookmaker sign-up offers before you travel, and book tickets only through the official listowelraces.ie site.