The Punchestown Festival: A Complete Guide

The Punchestown Festival runs over five days in late April and early May, traditionally opening on the last Tuesday of April. In 2026 it ran from Tuesday 28 April to Saturday 2 May. That late-spring slot matters: by the end of April the British and Irish jumps season is almost done, the ground at Punchestown is usually on the faster side, and the Festival becomes the natural place for the campaign's loose ends to be tied up.

Where it is

The racecourse is at Punchestown, Naas, in County Kildare, about 40km from Dublin city centre, which is roughly an hour by road in normal traffic. The Eircode is W91 VCX4, and it works for sat-nav and Google Maps. The site runs to around 450 acres, broken down as a 200-acre racecourse, 100 acres of car parking and 150 acres of green pasture, all of it laid out in that natural bowl below the Wicklow hills.

The track is a right-handed, undulating, galloping oval, widely regarded as a fair and testing course that rewards sound jumping and stamina. The defining feature is the finish: a steady climb through the final five furlongs to the winning post, which places a real premium on stamina and a horse's ability to keep galloping when it is hurting. The steeplechase track is a two-mile right-handed oval with the fences not considered unduly stiff, though local track knowledge tends to help a jockey. The hurdle course sits inside the chase track, with some tight bends to negotiate before a long run-in.

One thing not to worry about at Punchestown is the draw. As at every National Hunt course, there are no starting stalls, the fields jump obstacles over staying trips, and the draw is simply not a meaningful factor. The things that matter here are jumping, stamina and class.

The five-day shape

Each day is built around its own marquee race or pair of races, with the meeting front-loaded with championship action and finishing on a family-friendly Saturday. The shape of the 2026 Festival was as follows.

Day	Date (2026)	Headline race(s)	Grade 1s
1 (Tue)	28 April	William Hill Champion Chase	3
2 (Wed)	29 April	Ladbrokes Punchestown Gold Cup	3
3 (Thu)	30 April	Ladbrokes Champion Stayers Hurdle (and the La Touche Cup)	2
4 (Fri, Ladies Day)	1 May	Boodles Champion Hurdle	2
5 (Sat, Family Day)	2 May	SBK Irish EBF Mares Champion Hurdle	2

That gives 12 Grade 1 races in all, spread so that every day has a genuine championship to anchor it. The 2025 Festival was worth €3.5 million across 40 races, with the Gold Cup alone worth €300,000. Dates for 2027 had not been confirmed at the time of writing.

No other jumps meeting in Europe carries 12 Grade 1 races, and at Punchestown they arrive at a pace, three on the opening day, three on the second, then a steady run of championships to the close. Three of them stand above the rest.

The Ladbrokes Punchestown Gold Cup

The Gold Cup is the Festival's centrepiece chase, run on the Wednesday over about 3m1f for five-year-olds and up, and worth €300,000 in recent years. The present version was introduced in 1999, replacing an older novices-only race, and the sponsorship has passed from Heineken through Diageo, Tote Ireland and Bibby Financial Services to Ladbrokes Coral since 2017.

The roll of honour reads like a history of Irish chasing. Imperial Call took the first running in 1999, followed by Commanche Court (2000) and Florida Pearl (2002). Beef Or Salmon won the 2006 renewal for Michael Hourigan, then Neptune Collonges became the first dual winner in 2007 and 2008. Later names include Sir Des Champs (2013), Boston Bob (2014), Bellshill (2018), Kemboy (2019, which gave Ruby Walsh his final career winner), Paul Nicholls's Clan Des Obeaux (2021), Allaho (2022), the dual winner Fastorslow (2023 and 2024), Galopin Des Champs (2025) and Gaelic Warrior, who won the 2026 running by 26 lengths to complete the Cheltenham and Punchestown Gold Cup double. Willie Mullins is the dominant trainer with eight wins since 1999; Ruby Walsh is the leading jockey of the modern era with six.

One persistent myth is worth correcting. Kauto Star did not win the Punchestown Gold Cup. He ran in the race and was pulled up, notably in 2011, the year Follow The Plan won. He should not be listed among its winners.

The William Hill Champion Chase

The two-mile championship chase opens proceedings on day one, run over 2m for five-year-olds and up and worth around €300,000. It became a conditions race in 1999, and William Hill has sponsored it since 2021. Its winners are a who's who of top two-milers: Sizing Europe (a dual winner), Big Zeb, Master Minded, Sprinter Sacre, the dual winner Un De Sceaux (2018 and 2019), Chacun Pour Soi (2021), the dual winner Energumene (2022 and 2023), Banbridge (2024), Marine Nationale (2025) and Il Etait Temps in 2026. Paul Townend has won it multiple times, including aboard Il Etait Temps, and Willie Mullins is again the leading trainer.

The Boodles Champion Hurdle

The two-mile hurdling championship is the Friday feature, run on Ladies Day for four-year-olds and up and worth €300,000, with €180,000 to the winner in 2026. Boodles has sponsored it since 2024. Istabraq won the first modern running in 1999, and the honour board since has included Moscow Flyer (2001), Hardy Eustace (2004), Brave Inca (2005), Hurricane Fly (a record four in a row from 2010 to 2013), Jezki (2014), Faugheen (2015), Buveur D'Air (2019), Honeysuckle (2021) and State Man, who won three years running from 2023 to 2025. Lossiemouth took the 2026 renewal at 2/7, her 11th Grade 1, completing the Cheltenham and Punchestown Champion Hurdle double. Hurricane Fly is the leading horse with four wins, Ruby Walsh the leading jockey with six, and Willie Mullins the leading trainer with eleven.

The rest of the dozen

The remaining Grade 1s span every division. Day three brings the Ladbrokes Champion Stayers Hurdle over about 2m7½f, formerly the World Series Hurdle, which the great mare Quevega won four times and which Bob Olinger took in 2026 on the final start of his career. The novice championships are spread across the week: the PRL Champion Novice Hurdle and the Dooley Insurance Group Champion Novice Chase on day one, the Channor Real Estate Group Novice Hurdle and the Race & Stay Champion I.N.H. Flat Race (the championship bumper, run for the Conyngham Cup) on day two, the Barberstown Castle Novice Chase on day three, and the Alanna Homes Champion Novice Hurdle on day four. The meeting closes on Saturday with the SBK Irish EBF Mares Champion Hurdle and the Ballymore Champion Four Year Old Hurdle for the season's best juveniles, a race Lossiemouth herself won back in 2023.

For all the Grade 1 championships, the race that draws the longest gaze at Punchestown is not a Grade 1 at all. The Mongey Communications La Touche Cup is run on the Thursday over the banks, and there is nothing else like it in Irish racing.

The only banks course in Ireland

Punchestown has the only cross-country banks course in the country, a long and twisting circuit jumped in both directions, turning both left and right-handed, over a variety of banks, stone walls, brush fences, grass banks and hurdles. The famous historic double-bank had a first ditch, known as the grip, reported at six feet six inches wide and three feet deep. The La Touche Cup is run over about 4m1f, which makes it one of the longest and most distinctive races anywhere in Ireland. It is a test of jumping, stamina and bravery rather than raw speed, and it rewards horses and riders who have learned the course's peculiar demands.

The Banks King

One name dominates the race: Enda Bolger, the trainer known as the Banks King, who has won the La Touche Cup a record 15 times. His most famous association was with Risk Of Thunder, owned by the actor Sean Connery, who won the race a record seven times between 1995 and 2002 (it was not run in 2001). Risk Of Thunder later retired to JP McManus's Martinstown Stud, where he was a companion of the great hurdler Istabraq, and lived to the age of 27.

Bolger's other banks specialists include Garde Champetre, L'Ami, Spot Thedifference, Quantitativeeasing and Auvergnat, who won in 2018. The most recent chapter belongs to Busselton, who won back-to-back runnings in 2025, then trained by Joseph O'Brien, and 2026, by which time he was trained by Bolger himself and ridden by Darragh O'Keeffe at 7/2. That 2026 success was Bolger's 15th in the race, extending a record that may never be matched.

For many regulars the La Touche is the moment that sets Punchestown apart from anywhere else. The runners disappear over the banks and out into the wider course, reappearing in a different place to the one you expected, and the crowd follows them around the rails rather than watching from a single grandstand. It is jumps racing in its oldest, rawest form, run on the same ground where the Kildare Hunt Club first organised steeplechases in the nineteenth century.

The Punchestown Festival is established as the climax of the European National Hunt season, the meeting that comes after Cheltenham in March and Aintree in April and brings the whole campaign to its end. That position is not an accident. Under former general manager Dick O'Sullivan, the Festival was extended from four days to five, the prize fund rose past €3 million, and attendance records were broken again and again until the meeting settled into its present role as the season's grand finale.

Where the season's arguments are settled

Because it comes last, Punchestown is where the year's big questions are finally answered. Horses that ran well at Cheltenham or Aintree come here to confirm their form or to put a disappointment right. Rivalries that simmered all winter get one more run. And the meeting carries real championship weight beyond the individual races: the Irish trainers' title is often still being contested into the Festival, as it was in 2026, when Willie Mullins overhauled Gordon Elliott, who had led the table coming in, to reclaim the championship. JP McManus collected his sixth successive Champion Owner trophy at Punchestown in 2025, the 23rd of his career.

The double-double of 2025/26 captured exactly why the meeting matters. Willie Mullins's stable completed the remarkable feat of winning the Champion Hurdle, Champion Chase and Gold Cup at both Cheltenham and Punchestown in the same season. Gaelic Warrior took the Gold Cup at both tracks; Lossiemouth took the Champion Hurdle at both; the season's verdicts delivered in March were ratified again in Kildare in May.

A meeting in its own right

It would be a mistake, though, to think of Punchestown purely as Cheltenham's echo. The Festival has its own history, its own champions and its own races that exist nowhere else, the La Touche Cup chief among them. Some of the sport's greatest names made their reputations here as much as anywhere: Hurricane Fly winning the Champion Hurdle four years running, Quevega dominating the staying hurdle, Energumene and Un De Sceaux ruling the two-mile chase. The disruption of 2001, when foot-and-mouth forced fixtures to move and some races to relocate, only underlined how central the meeting had become to the structure of the Irish season.

There is also a wider significance. The Festival's economic impact was put at over €70 million by CEO Conor O'Neill in April 2026, and County Kildare Chamber separately estimates it brings in excess of €100 million each year to the local economy. For Irish jumps racing, the season does not truly end until Punchestown says so.

Punchestown in late spring is a party as much as a race meeting. The Festival is one of the largest sporting and social gatherings in Ireland, and the numbers tell the story: a record five-day aggregate of 136,651 people attended in 2025, up more than 15 per cent on the 118,318 of 2024. Big crowds are nothing new here. More than 40,000 people were attending Punchestown back in the 1860s, and the 1868 visit of the Prince and Princess of Wales drew an estimated 5,000 racegoers by train from Dublin alone.

Ladies Day and the social week

Friday is Ladies Day and traditionally the biggest day of the meeting. In 2025 it drew 42,138 people, the largest single-day crowd of the year, and in 2026 the record rose again to 43,572 for the Boodles Champion Hurdle on 1 May. The Bollinger Best Dressed Competition runs across the first four days and culminates in a grand final on Ladies Day. There is no formal dress code at Punchestown, though smarter wear, often a suit, is the norm in the hospitality pavilions.

Away from the track there is plenty to do. A shopping village offers Irish-designed clothing, art, millinery and jewellery, there is live music and DJs through the afternoon and evening, and Saturday is Family Day, with a Junior Jockey Club Fun Zone for younger racegoers. The Goffs Punchestown Sale takes place in the winner's enclosure, and the long-running Punchestown Kidney Research Fund charity race, in its 34th year in 2025, was on target to pass the €2 million fundraising mark.

Enclosures and hospitality

The course is built around a main grandstand with a number of hospitality viewing areas, restaurants, pavilions, bars and private suites. Punchestown is well known for its race and dine experience, and the scale of the catering operation is considerable. In 2025 the meeting catered for 17,000 hospitality guests from 806 companies, with the bars pouring an estimated 132,000 pints over the five days; for 2026 the local press cited more than 24,000 guests from around 800 companies expected. The venue is also a wheelchair-friendly one, with ground-level cafes, restaurants and bars, wheelchair viewing platforms at the parade ring and on the main grandstand, lifts in all buildings, accessible toilets throughout, a limited mobility car park for badge holders, and complimentary access for one carer per disabled racegoer.

Punchestown is an easy day out from Dublin and the surrounding counties, but the Festival draws big crowds, so a little planning goes a long way. The course is near Naas in County Kildare, about 40km and roughly an hour from Dublin city centre, just off the N7/M7. The Eircode W91 VCX4 works for sat-nav and Google Maps.

Getting there

By road: from Dublin take the N7/M7 towards Naas, then follow the signs and the stewards' directions to the racecourse. A Garda traffic plan operates during the Festival, so allow extra time. Free on-site parking is provided, with the car park advertised at a capacity of up to 17,000 cars.

By rail: Irish Rail runs from Dublin's Heuston Station to Sallins (Sallins and Naas), just outside Naas and about a 15-minute drive from the course. Shuttle buses operate from the station during the Festival.

By bus and shuttle: a dedicated Marathon Travel official Punchestown coach service runs from Dublin city centre, departing Wellington Quay and taking about an hour in normal traffic; 2026 fares ran from an Early Bird rate of €30 up to €40 for a full return. A local hop-on, hop-off shuttle ran from Poplar Square and Lawlors Hotel in Naas from 12.30pm daily at €5 each way, and Dublin Coach runs from Dublin Airport via the Red Cow into Naas, connecting with the Naas shuttle.

By air: Ryanair is the official airline partner, and helicopter access is a known feature of the Festival for those arriving privately.

Tickets, times and staying over

General admission tickets started from €30 for the 2026 Festival. Race and Stay, Punchestown's official guest partner, lists packages from as low as €137 per guest, including hotel accommodation, breakfast, admission tickets and transport. Earlier start times of around 2.30pm were introduced across most days for the 2025 and 2026 Festivals, with Friday's Ladies Day card starting later at around 3.40pm. Arrive well before the first race to allow for traffic and parking.

Naas, the county town, is about 2km away, with Newbridge a little further on. Named hotels in the area include Lawlor's of Naas, the Killashee Hotel and the Osprey Hotel, with the K Club further afield. If you want to make more of the trip, the Irish National Stud is close by, and the Bronze Age Longstone at Punchestown stands about 700m north of the course.

How to watch

If you cannot get to Kildare, the Festival is well covered. In the Republic of Ireland it is free to air on RTÉ: in 2026 RTÉ broadcast the meeting on RTÉ2 and the RTÉ Player from Tuesday to Thursday from 3.30pm, on Friday from 4pm, and on Saturday from 3pm on RTÉ One. In the UK and for dedicated coverage, Punchestown is a Racing TV course, and all 26 Irish racecourses have been on Racing TV since 2019; a media-rights deal keeps Irish racing there until at least 2029, so all five days of the Festival are shown on Racing TV in Britain. The RTÉ Player streams the coverage free within the Republic, while Racing TV offers online streaming to subscribers. Many streams are geo-blocked to Ireland and the UK.

A closing word on betting. The Festival is a wonderful place to have a small interest in the racing, but it pays to be clear-eyed about it. Backing favourites loses money to starting price over time, and the same is true of any simple system, because the bookmaker's margin is built into every price. Some marquee Punchestown races have gone to short-priced favourites in recent years, but that is not evidence that backing them is profitable. Treat any bet as the cost of entertainment, never as an investment.