Irish Champions Festival 2026 Tips: Leopardstown and the Curragh

Two days, one at each course, and six Group 1s that between them cover the middle-distance championship, the staying championship, the sprint championship and the leading juveniles of both sexes. The table is the spine of the weekend; the notes under it are where the betting angle sits for each day.

Day	Course	Race	Grade	Trip	Who it is for
Saturday	Leopardstown	Irish Champion Stakes	Group 1	1m 2f	The season's middle-distance championship, 3yo+
Saturday	Leopardstown	Matron Stakes	Group 1	1m	Fillies and mares, milers
Sunday	The Curragh	Irish St Leger	Group 1	1m 6f	Staying championship, 3yo+
Sunday	The Curragh	Flying Five Stakes	Group 1	5f	Sprint championship, 3yo+
Sunday	The Curragh	National Stakes	Group 1	7f	Leading two-year-old colts
Sunday	The Curragh	Moyglare Stud Stakes	Group 1	7f	Leading two-year-old fillies

Saturday at Leopardstown: the Irish Champion Stakes

This is the weekend's marquee race and Europe's leading middle-distance championship outside the Arc weekend: the Guineas, Derby and Eclipse form all converges here in September, so the field is usually the strongest the meeting sees all year. The angle is less about finding a price than about respecting the level: this is not a race where a stable's second string competes credibly, so a runner stepping up from Group 2 company needs a specific reason to be taken seriously, and the market at the top is usually well informed. The Matron Stakes on the same card is the fillies' equivalent over a mile, and rewards a filly who has already shown Group 1 form or something close to it over the trip.

Sunday at the Curragh: the Irish St Leger and the juvenile Group 1s

The Irish St Leger closes the weekend as Ireland's own staying championship over a mile and six, contested by horses fresh from the Cup form of the summer or stepping up in trip from a mile-and-a-half campaign. The same filters that decide Doncaster's St Leger a week or so earlier apply here: proven stamina over the trip counts for more than raw class, and a horse that has never travelled this far needs a stronger case than hope. The Flying Five Stakes runs the same afternoon at the opposite extreme: a pure five-furlong sprint championship for three-year-olds and up, sitting neatly between the Nunthorpe at York and the Prix de l'Abbaye at Longchamp on the European sprint calendar, so the horses that turn up here often carry the season's best sprint form from either side of the Irish Sea. Run alongside those two, the National Stakes and the Moyglare Stud Stakes are the season's clearest form guides for the following spring's Guineas: both are contested by the leading juveniles of their sex over seven furlongs, and a strong form line here (a well-regarded yard, a taking style of victory, a step up from a Group 2 or 3) travels forward to the following year's Classic trials more reliably than almost any other juvenile form in Europe.

Betting the whole weekend

The Irish Champions Festival overlaps the closing days of Doncaster's St Leger Festival, which runs from the Thursday to the Sunday the same week: the Irish Champion Stakes falls on the same Saturday as Doncaster's own St Leger Stakes. If you are following both meetings, an account that treats UK and Irish racing on the same concessions saves the bother of switching between two sets of terms across a busy weekend: see the where to bet section below.

The two Group 1s that carry the weekend's biggest markets ask different questions of a horse. The Irish Champion Stakes is a pure class test over ten furlongs against the best middle-distance horses in Europe; the Irish St Leger is a stamina test over a mile and six that most three-year-olds have never attempted. Both, in different ways, are dominated by one yard.

Irish Champion Stakes: recent winners

Irish Champion Stakes: Recent Winners

Group 1 · 1m 2f · 3yo+ · Leopardstown · September (Irish Champions Festival)

Year	Winner	Age	SP	Jockey	Trainer
2025	Delacroix	3	4/7	Christophe Soumillon	Aidan O'Brien
2024	Economics	3	7/4	Tom Marquand	William Haggas
2023	Auguste Rodin	3	—	Ryan Moore	Aidan O'Brien
2022	Luxembourg	3	—	Ryan Moore	Aidan O'Brien
2021	St Mark's Basilica	3	—	Ryan Moore	Aidan O'Brien
2020	Magical	5	—	Seamie Heffernan	Aidan O'Brien
2019	Magical	4	—	Ryan Moore	Aidan O'Brien
2018	Roaring Lion	3	—	Oisin Murphy	John Gosden
2017	Decorated Knight	5	—	Andrea Atzeni	Roger Charlton
2016	Almanzor	3	—	Christophe Soumillon	Jean-Claude Rouget

Trends

• Elite ten-furlong performers of any age (3yo+) win it; three-year-olds meeting their elders have an excellent record.
• Aidan O'Brien and Ryan Moore hold the strongest recent hands.

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

The table is read from our source-verified race record, so what it shows is what the record holds and nothing more: where a starting price is blank, we have not verified it rather than guessed it.

Aidan O'Brien has won three of the last four runnings, with Delacroix (2025), Auguste Rodin (2023) and Luxembourg (2022), and each was a three-year-old with Guineas or Derby form from earlier in the season, not an older campaigner. The one break in the run, Economics for William Haggas in 2024, was itself a three-year-old fresh off winning the Eclipse, so the pattern holds even in the exception: this is overwhelmingly a three-year-olds' race at the top, and the yard sending the strongest Classic form into September starts with an edge. Ballydoyle's dominance here is closer to structural than lucky (the string simply has more genuine Group 1 three-year-olds to choose from than any rival), which is worth remembering when the market prices an O'Brien runner as a short-priced favourite. Short does not mean wrong.

Irish St Leger: recent winners

Irish St. Leger: Recent Winners

Group 1 · 1m 6f · 3yo+ (fillies & mares 3lb allowance) · Curragh · September (Irish Champions Festival)

Year	Winner	Age	SP	Jockey	Trainer
2025	Al Riffa	5	4/5	Dylan Browne McMonagle	Joseph O'Brien
2024	Kyprios	6	2/5	Ryan Moore	Aidan O'Brien
2023	Eldar Eldarov	4	—	David Egan	Roger Varian
2022	Kyprios	4	—	Ryan Moore	Aidan O'Brien
2021	Sonnyboyliston	4	—	Ben Coen	Johnny Murtagh
2020	Search For A Song	4	—	Oisin Orr	Dermot Weld
2019	Search For A Song	3	—	Chris Hayes	Dermot Weld
2018	Flag of Honour	3	—	Ryan Moore	Aidan O'Brien
2017	Order of St George	5	—	Ryan Moore	Aidan O'Brien
2016	Wicklow Brave	7	—	Frankie Dettori	Willie Mullins

Trends

• Top staying form is key; hardened older stayers and progressive middle-distance types both win it.
• Aidan O'Brien and Ryan Moore dominate; Dermot Weld a repeat force.

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

Kyprios won this race twice, in 2022 and 2024, both times for Aidan O'Brien and Ryan Moore, and remains the benchmark for what an Irish St Leger horse looks like: a proven Cup-class stayer, not a Classic type stepping up in trip for the first time. Al Riffa's 2025 win for Joseph O'Brien keeps the race inside the wider O'Brien family even where it slips from the senior yard, and Eldar Eldarov's 2023 win for Roger Varian is the clearest recent example of an outside yard taking the race: a Leger winner at Doncaster the year before, arriving with the exact stamina proof this race demands. The read-through is consistent across all four years: proven form at the trip, or very close to it, beats a horse arriving on hope that the step up will suit.

What the market gets right, and where the edge sits

The honest summary for both races is that the market gets them mostly right: Group 1 fields this deep rarely hide a genuine outsider. Where an edge exists, it is in the same place for both: a horse with the exact proven form the race demands (Cup form for the Leger, top-level three-year-old form for the Champion Stakes) is worth backing even at a short price, and a horse without it is worth fading even at an attractive one, whatever yard it comes from.

Two different tracks in two days is the defining feature of this weekend, and the betting angles follow directly from what each one asks.

Leopardstown, Saturday: a stiffer test than the trip suggests

Leopardstown is a wide left-handed oval with a deceptively stiff three-furlong uphill run-in, and it is that climb to the line, not the trip on the racecard, that decides the Irish Champion Stakes and the Matron Stakes. A horse can travel well enough through the first mile and still find nothing under pressure on the rise; the profile that repeats is a proven battler rather than a pure galloper, and that matters more here than it would on a flatter track over the same distance. Watch how a fancied runner has finished its previous races, not just where: one that has picked up cleanly inside the final furlong travels the Leopardstown hill better than one that has needed to be niggled along from further out.

The Curragh, Sunday: as fair as it gets, so the best horse usually wins

The Curragh is widely regarded as one of the fairest tracks in the world: a galloping, right-handed horseshoe of about two miles with a straight three-furlong run-in that climbs only slightly. Our own course guide is direct about the draw here: the round courses are fair, and pace and position in the run count for more than the stall number. That cuts a specific way for betting: this is not a track where a poor draw excuses a beaten favourite, so when the well-fancied horse loses at the Curragh, the more useful question is usually about the horse's form or the pace of the race, not the stall it came from.

The Ballydoyle signal, across the whole weekend

Aidan O'Brien's yard does not just win the individual feature races (see the previous section); it typically fields the strongest hand across both days, and reading which of his runners the stable itself rates is often more informative than reading the market alone. Jockey bookings are the clearest public signal: when Ryan Moore is on a specific O'Brien runner rather than a stable companion at a bigger price, that booking is usually the yard's own verdict on which one it fancies most, and it is worth more than a formbook read of both horses' recent runs.

The going, and the weekend's other complication

Irish tracks in September are usually good to good-to-firm rather than soft, and the going tends to matter less here than it does at a British autumn meeting: the bigger factor most years is genuine pace in a small, high-class field rather than ground conditions. Check the official going report on the morning of each day rather than assuming from the week's weather, since a watered track can ride differently to the forecast.

The other complication is scheduling, not the track: the Irish Champions Festival overlaps the closing days of Doncaster's St Leger Festival, and the Irish Champion Stakes falls on the same Saturday as Doncaster's own St Leger Stakes. If you are following both meetings across the weekend, that is worth planning for before the first race, not during it: see where to bet below.

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 weekend'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.

The Irish Champions Festival's fields are typically declared a few days before each card. Until then, 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 across both Leopardstown and the Curragh, 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 Irish Champions Festival

The money decisions for a two-day weekend across two courses are made before the first race, not during it. The week's Irish Champions Festival betting offers page compares what the bookmakers are offering for the meeting, and three things matter more than a headline free bet:

• Best Odds Guaranteed. Six Group 1s across two days means short-priced favourites whose prices move through the morning, so BOG pays more often over this weekend than a one-off free bet does. Best Odds Guaranteed bookmakers.
• Non-runner no bet, if you are betting ante-post. With six Group 1 fields to watch and a declaration stage still to come for most of them, NRNB is the difference between a price and a gamble on a late defection. Best ante-post betting sites.
• Extra places. Away from the championship races themselves, the supporting handicaps at both tracks are where an extra place turns a marginal each-way 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 Irish Champions Festival hub links the current edition's hub, and the settled record of the tips above stays on this page.

Responsible note

A championship weekend across two courses invites chasing the one that got away, especially with a day off between the Leopardstown card and the Curragh one. Set the weekend's stake before it starts and keep to it regardless of how Saturday goes. If betting stops being fun, BeGambleAware offers free, confidential support on 0808 8020 133. 18+, please gamble responsibly.