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The Randox Grand National is the biggest betting race run anywhere in Britain, a single Saturday afternoon that turns over more money than any other day in the racing calendar. Up to 34 runners line up over two laps of Aintree's National Course, 4 miles 2½ furlongs and 30 fences, for a prize fund that puts it among the richest jump races in the world.
The National closes a three-day meeting rather than standing alone: the Aintree Hurdle on Thursday and the Melling Chase on Friday are both Grade 1s in their own right, real championship-class racing that gets overshadowed by what follows on Saturday. Anyone building a week around the meeting has three cards worth watching, not one.
What makes the National different from every other race on the calendar isn't the prize money, it's the format. This is a handicap over a unique course, with fences no other race in Britain jumps, run in front of a field size and a betting market that dwarfs anything else in the sport. The rest of this page works through what that actually means: the course itself, what the numbers say about who tends to win it, and where the value sits once this year's field is declared.
For the specific date and time, see the Grand National race-times guide. This page covers the 2027 renewal.
Where to Bet
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Why Aintree is different from any other chase
Aintree's National Course exists for one race a year. Horses cover two laps of a unique triangular circuit, 16 individual obstacles with 14 of them jumped twice, for 30 fences across the full distance. Nothing else in British racing is built like it.
The fences that decide it
Becher's Brook (fences 6 and 22) is the most famous obstacle in the sport: 4ft 10in high with a drop on landing that has caught horses out since the very first official running in 1839, when Captain Martin Becher himself came to grief there. The Chair (fence 15) is the tallest fence on the course at 5ft 2in, with a 6ft ditch on the take-off side and a landing that sits higher than the take-off, jumped only once, on the first circuit. Canal Turn (fences 8 and 24) asks a different question entirely: a standard 5ft fence followed immediately by a 90-degree left turn along the Leeds-Liverpool Canal, a fence that rewards a jockey's positioning as much as a horse's jump.
After the last fence comes a 494-yard run-in to the post, the longest of any racecourse in Britain, long enough that horses who look like winners jumping the final fence have been caught in the closing yards more than once.
A reformed, still unforgiving test
The field is capped at 34 runners, reduced from the larger fields the National ran for most of its history as part of a wider set of safety reforms to fence dimensions, ground checks and veterinary screening. It remains, by a distance, the biggest field and the longest test any horse in training will face in a single afternoon: stamina, jumping technique and a clear passage through space all matter, and none of the three is guaranteed by class alone.
That combination, fences unlike anywhere else, a maximum field, and a distance that exposes any weakness in stamina, is why the National has produced some of the sport's most famous shocks. It is also why the patterns in the next section carry real weight: with this much unpredictability built into the test itself, the angles that do repeat are worth taking seriously.
What actually wins the National: weight, age and experience
Weight: the ceiling that just moved
For decades, the accepted wisdom was that a horse carrying much above 11st 6lb simply did not win a Grand National, the last horse to do it having been Red Rum himself, carrying 12st in 1974. That ceiling held for forty years, tested only by Many Clouds' 11st 9lb win in 2015, until I Am Maximus carried 11st 12lb to victory in 2026, the second-heaviest winning weight in the race's history behind Red Rum alone. Across all 55 recorded runnings, the average winning weight sits at 10st 11lb, and four of the last ten winners carried 11st 0lb or more against 31% across the full history, a real, recent tilt towards the top of the weights that the old rule of thumb no longer fully explains.
Age and experience
The trends
Winning age
- 9yo
- 29%
- 8yo
- 20%
- 10yo
- 20%
- 11yo
- 18%
Age known for 55 of 55 winners (1970–2026)
Market
- Started favourite
- 22%
- Won at 10/1 or bigger
- 76%
- Won at 5/1 or shorter
- 4%
Starting price known for 54 of 55 winners (1970–2026)
Trainers & jockeys
- Most successful trainer
- Ginger McCain (4)
- Most successful jockey
- Brian Fletcher (2)
55 runnings (1970–2026)
Nine years old is the single most common winning age on record, and horses aged eight to ten between them account for more than two-thirds of every winner since 1970. Repeat winners are a real pattern too, not a fluke of one or two names: Red Rum won three times in the 1970s, Tiger Roll won back-to-back in 2018 and 2019, and I Am Maximus has now done the same either side of a stablemate's win in between.
One yard's recent run
Willie Mullins has trained the winner in each of the last three runnings, I Am Maximus twice and Nick Rockett, ridden by Mullins' son Patrick, in between. Three wins from three years for one yard, in a race built specifically to level the field through the weights, is a rare run and worth knowing before you look at the market.
None of this predicts a winner on its own. It tells you what has tended to hold true across more than fifty years of a race designed to be unpredictable: that the weeks of prep and the yard behind a horse count for more here than most people assume, and that the "no big weights win it" rule is being tested right now, not a law of physics.
The best bet, and where to bet
How the best bet works here
There is no pick on this page until the 34 confirmed runners are declared, because a tip on a field that has not been declared is a guess wearing a horse's name. Once declarations land, this section carries one best bet with the reasoning in a paragraph and the price taken, settled to Starting Price after the race with the result written next to it, win or lose. Until then, the course section and the weight-and-age patterns above are the honest starting point, and our AI Lab's morning card publishes the model's fair price for every declared runner once the field is confirmed, 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 Grand National
With up to 34 runners, the National runs the deepest each-way market of the racing year, and that changes what actually matters when picking a bookmaker for it:
- Extra places. A standard each-way race pays three or four places; National specials from some firms pay five, six or more. On a field this size, the extra place is frequently worth more than a headline free bet.
- Non-runner no bet. Ante-post prices on the National move for months before declarations, and a horse can be taken out for any reason right up to the off. NRNB is the difference between holding a price and holding a bet on a horse that never runs.
- Best Odds Guaranteed. Morning prices on National day can differ sharply from the off, especially once late money moves the market. BOG pays the better of the two automatically.
The Grand National betting offers page compares what is currently available across the market. For the wider view, best free bet offers for horse racing and the best bookmakers for horse racing.
Responsible note
The National is the one race a year that pulls in people who back nothing else all season, and that is exactly when it pays to be deliberate rather than swept along. Decide your stake before the field is declared and stick to it regardless of what the build-up does to the odds. If betting stops being fun, BeGambleAware offers free, confidential support on 0808 8020 133. 18+, please gamble responsibly.
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Earlier years of this page, kept live as the archive.
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