Cheltenham Festival 2027 Tips: Four Championship Days and the Angles That Repeat

Four days, four Grade 1 championships, and a set of Festival handicaps that are among the hardest betting puzzles in the sport. The table is the spine of the week; the notes under it are where the angle sits for each day.

Day	Championship race	Course used	Notable handicaps
Tuesday, Champion Day	Champion Hurdle	Old Course	Supreme Novices' Hurdle, Ultima Handicap Chase
Wednesday, Ladies Day	Queen Mother Champion Chase	New Course	Coral Cup, Cross Country Chase
Thursday, St Patrick's Thursday	Stayers' Hurdle	New Course	Pertemps Final, Ryanair Chase
Friday, Gold Cup Day	Cheltenham Gold Cup	Old Course	County Hurdle, Grand Annual Chase

Tuesday: Champion Day

The Champion Hurdle opens the Festival and sets the tone: 2 miles 87 yards on the Old Course, the two-mile hurdling championship, and historically the race where the season's form book gets its first real stress test. The Supreme Novices' Hurdle earlier in the card is the first look at the next generation, and is watched as closely by the trade as by punters, since a form line established there often resurfaces in the following year's championship races.

Wednesday: Ladies Day

The Queen Mother Champion Chase, over the New Course's longer, more galloping two miles, is the two-mile chasing championship and usually the fastest, most electric race of the week. The Cross Country Chase, Cheltenham's own figure-of-eight oddity over roughly 3 miles 6 furlongs, rewards proven course form above almost anything else: the pool of horses with actual experience over those banks and ditches is small, and that experience carries real weight.

Thursday: St Patrick's Thursday

The Stayers' Hurdle is the staying hurdle championship, and historically one of the more open of the four championships: big-priced winners are not unusual here. The Ryanair Chase, over an intermediate trip, has become one of the meeting's most competitive non-championship Grade 1s, regularly pulling in horses who are just short of Gold Cup class but too good for anything else.

Friday: Gold Cup Day

The Cheltenham Gold Cup closes the week: 3 miles 2 furlongs 70 yards back on the tighter Old Course, the championship that defines the whole sport of jumps racing. The card around it is stacked deliberately, the County Hurdle and the Grand Annual Chase both large-field handicaps that punish an under-researched bet as readily as the championship race rewards a well-researched one.

The handicaps, as a class

The Festival's non-championship handicaps (the Ultima, the Coral Cup, the Pertemps Final, the County Hurdle, the Grand Annual and the rest) are where most of the week's betting actually happens, and where the field sizes, sixteen to twenty-eight runners, make each-way terms essential rather than optional. Unlike the championships, the best horse does not reliably win a Festival handicap: compressed weights and a level of depth most tracks never see make these the real puzzles of the week. Course form and a trainer with a proven Festival record earn their keep here more than anywhere else on the card.

Four different tests, four different questions for the market. Reading each one on its own terms, rather than applying one Festival-wide rule, is most of the work.

Champion Hurdle: the two-mile hurdling championship

Nicky Henderson is the record trainer with nine wins, but the 2026 running went to Willie Mullins with Lossiemouth at 7/5 favourite, ridden by Paul Townend. Honeysuckle (2021, 2022) and Buveur D'Air (2017, 2018) are the recent dual winners, which tells you the championship rewards a horse that stays sound and keeps its form together across seasons more than it rewards a single big performance. The approach here is the same one the Cheltenham betting guide sets out for every championship race: identify the best horse first, then decide whether the price offers value. Constitution Hill at 4/11 in 2023 was still the correct back despite the short price, because an 85%-plus win chance at even money is a mathematically good bet; finding a big-priced outsider is not the game in a championship.

Queen Mother Champion Chase: the two-mile chasing championship

Henderson, de Bromhead, Nicholls and Mullins have taken most of the recent runnings between them, and the winners cluster tightly in the 7-to-10 age range, the window where a two-mile chaser is at physical peak. Il Etait Temps (2026, Mullins, Townend, 5/2) and Energumene (2022 and 2023, Mullins, Townend) are the most recent examples of the pattern: a powerhouse yard, a proven jockey, and a horse at the right age. The New Course's longer, more galloping test suits a horse with a real turn of foot over the minimum trip, which is a different skill set to the Old Course's tighter test the following two days.

Stayers' Hurdle: the most open of the four

This is the championship where big prices keep winning: Sire Du Berlais at 33/1 (2023) and Home By The Lee at 33/1 (2026) are both within the last four runnings, and Flooring Porter's back-to-back wins in 2021 and 2022 are the exception that proves how unpredictable the division usually is. Irish yards, Elliott, de Bromhead, Mullins and Joseph O'Brien, have dominated recently, which matters because the Irish trial races (chiefly the Dublin Racing Festival in early February) are the clearest form guide the Stayers' Hurdle offers. An untested British stayer is a harder read than an Irish stayer with a recent trial run behind it.

Cheltenham Gold Cup: the championship

Cheltenham Gold Cup: Recent Winners

Grade 1 · 3m 2f 70y · 5yo+ · Cheltenham · March (Cheltenham Festival)

Year	Winner	Age	SP	Jockey	Trainer
2026	Gaelic Warrior	8	11/4jf	Paul Townend	Willie Mullins
2025	Inothewayurthinkin	7	15/2	Mark Walsh	Gavin Cromwell
2024	Galopin Des Champs	8	10/11f	Paul Townend	Willie Mullins
2023	Galopin Des Champs	7	6/4	Paul Townend	Willie Mullins
2022	A Plus Tard	8	3/1f	Rachael Blackmore	Henry De Bromhead
2021	Minella Indo	8	9/1	Jack Kennedy	Henry De Bromhead
2020	Al Boum Photo	8	100/30f	Paul Townend	Willie Mullins
2019	Al Boum Photo	7	12/1	Paul Townend	Willie Mullins
2018	Native River	8	5/1	Richard Johnson	Colin Tizzard
2017	Sizing John	7	7/1	Robbie Power	Jessica Harrington

Trends

• Willie Mullins dominates the modern Gold Cup (Al Boum Photo x2, Galopin Des Champs x2, Gaelic Warrior 2026) with Paul Townend aboard.
• Repeat winners are common for a true championship (Al Boum Photo 2019-20, Galopin Des Champs 2023-24).

Source-verified from official records. Last checked 2026-07-01.

Willie Mullins has rewritten the record book here: Al Boum Photo (2019, 2020), Galopin Des Champs (2023, 2024) and Gaelic Warrior (2026) give his operation five of the last eight runnings, with Paul Townend in the saddle for all of them. Repeat winners are common in a true championship, which argues for taking a proven Gold Cup performer seriously even when a flashier newcomer is fancied ahead of it. The Old Course's tighter turns and shorter run to the last suit a horse racing prominently, and the final hill, at its most punishing over 3 miles 2 furlongs, is where the Gold Cup is actually won or lost.

The rolls of honour for the other three championships carry the same source-verified detail: Champion Hurdle winners, Queen Mother Champion Chase winners, Stayers' Hurdle winners.

Cheltenham is the most-studied jumps track in Britain and still the hardest to bet, because the physical layout actually changes the questions the race asks. Four angles do most of the real work.

The hill

From the final obstacle to the winning post, the ground climbs roughly 50 feet over 260 yards. That climb has broken more apparent leaders than any single trip or ground condition on the card. If a horse is travelling beautifully approaching the last but hasn't yet hit the rise, that is not the moment to call the winner. The hill is where a true stayer separates from a horse that was merely quick enough to lead into the straight, and it is the single biggest reason Cheltenham form does not always transfer cleanly from flatter, sharper tracks.

Two courses, two different tests

Cheltenham runs on two circuits inside the same week. The Old Course, used Tuesday and Friday, is tighter with sharper turns, so pace tends to stay even and a horse racing prominently has a real edge, there is less room to make up ground on the bends. The New Course, used Wednesday and Thursday, adds an extra loop and runs about two furlongs longer per lap, a wider and more galloping test where a strong finisher can pick off tiring leaders from further back. A horse's running style matters more here than at almost any other jumps venue, and it is worth checking which course a horse's best form was achieved over before assuming it repeats.

The going, and who it actually favours

Festival going typically starts between soft and good-to-soft on the Tuesday and can change materially by the Saturday. Because Day 1 and Day 4 share the Old Course, that track absorbs two full days of racing before Gold Cup Friday, and can ride more cut up than the official going description suggests, particularly on the inside rail. On truly soft or heavy ground, horses drawn to save ground on the inner rail at Cheltenham gain real lengths through the turns, lengths that become expensive to find again up the hill. Course-and-going form from similarly undulating tracks (Sandown, Haydock, Punchestown) tends to transfer better than soft-ground form from a flat, sharp track like Musselburgh, because the hill adds a dimension those tracks do not replicate.

The Irish raiders

Irish-trained horses won 19 of the Festival's 28 races in 2023 and 18 in 2024, which makes cross-Channel form reading the single most load-bearing skill at this meeting. Willie Mullins, training from Closutton with well over 200 horses, has more Cheltenham winners than any trainer in history, and his horses often arrive off strong form from the Dublin Racing Festival in early February, itself a recognised Cheltenham trial. Gordon Elliott's larger, higher-volume operation tends to strike hardest in the handicaps and the longer-distance races, and Henry de Bromhead has been the third major force across both the championships and the handicap ranks. When any of the three Irish powerhouse yards sends a well-fancied runner, and especially when Mullins settles on a single stable favourite in a race where he holds multiple entries, that signal is worth more than most trends data on the page.

Handicaps need each-way, championships need conviction

The four championship races are Grade 1 non-handicaps where the best horse usually wins: the approach there is to identify that horse and judge whether the price reflects its real winning chance, not to search for a hidden outsider. The Festival's handicaps are the opposite problem entirely, sixteen to twenty-eight runners with compressed weights and no reliable "best horse wins" pattern, which is exactly where working the each-way terms through the each-way calculator turns a marginal each-way punt into a fair one.

How the daily best bets work here

From the morning of each card, this section carries one best bet for the day, published before the off with the reasoning in one paragraph and the price we took. Each evening it is settled to Starting Price and the result written next to it, win or lose. The week's record sits here in full; nothing is removed after a loser. Before the first declarations there is no pick, because a tip on a field that has not been declared is a guess with a name attached.

Cheltenham's fields are declared two days before each card, and the trainer entries published a few weeks out are already the best early guide to how the week is likely to shape up. Until declarations, the races above are the map and the angles in the previous section are the method. On the day, our AI Lab's morning card publishes the model's fair price for every runner at Cheltenham, which is the quickest way to see where the market and a cold read of the form disagree. The model's record is published in full and it is research, not a tip.

Where to bet on the Cheltenham Festival

The money decisions for a four-day, twenty-eight-race meeting are made before Tuesday's first race, not during the week. The Cheltenham Festival betting offers page compares what the bookmakers are offering, and three things matter more than a headline free bet:

• Non-runner no bet on the championships. If you are betting ante-post on any of the four Grade 1s, NRNB is the difference between a price and a gamble on a declaration that never happens. The Cheltenham antepost hub tracks NRNB coverage across the market specifically for this meeting.
• Best Odds Guaranteed. Over a week of morning prices that move hard on Irish trial results and market rumour, BOG is the offer that pays out most often. Best Odds Guaranteed bookmakers.
• Extra places in the big handicaps. The Ultima, the Coral Cup, the Pertemps Final, the County Hurdle and the Grand Annual are exactly the fields where an extra each-way place turns a marginal bet into a fair one.

For a wider view, best free bet offers for horse racing and the best bookmakers for horse racing.

After the meeting

Every day's finishing orders and starting prices land in the meeting's results hub as the cards finish; the Cheltenham festival hub links the current edition's hub, and the settled record of the tips above stays on this page.

Responsible note

Four days, twenty-eight races and the biggest betting week of the jumps season is a marathon, not a sprint. The single biggest risk for a casual punter is not any one bet but the cumulative pressure across the week: a bad Tuesday tends to produce worse decisions by Thursday. Set the week's stake before it starts and keep to it. If betting stops being fun, BeGambleAware offers free, confidential support on 0808 8020 133. 18+, please gamble responsibly.