Listowel Harvest Festival 2026 Tips: What Wins the Kerry National

Listowel grew from a two-day meeting to seven in 2002, and the week now mixes Flat and jumps racing rather than running as a single-code festival. The established recent pattern, drawn from the 2024 and 2025 cards, puts the feature races here:

Day	Code	Feature race
Sunday	National Hunt	Kerry Dairy Ireland Handicap Chase
Monday	Flat	John McGuire Handicap
Tuesday	Flat	Listowel Stakes (Listed)
Wednesday	National Hunt	Guinness Kerry National (Grade 3)
Thursday	National Hunt	Lartigue Hurdle (Listed)
Friday, Ladies Day	National Hunt	William Hill Handicap Hurdle (Listed)
Saturday	National Hunt	Charlie Chute Memorial Handicap Chase

Treat that as the recent pattern rather than a fixed rule: the meeting's own preview material is explicit that the exact allocation of feature races to days can shift from one year to the next, so check the declared card once entries are out rather than assuming this table repeats exactly.

The Guinness Kerry National

The Kerry National itself is a Grade 3 Handicap Chase over three miles, run every September. It is worth EUR200,000 in total, EUR120,000 to the winner, and it carried Irish racing's old "Grade A" handicap label up to and including 2022 before the same race became Grade 3 under the current system from 2023, a relabelling rather than a change in the test itself. The 2025 renewal ran to 18 runners, and recent fields have generally been big and well stocked rather than a small, easy-to-read handicap.

Two horses give the race a following well beyond Listowel. Monty's Pass won the 2002 Kerry National at 9/1 for trainer Jimmy Mangan and jockey Barry Geraghty, then went off 16/1 for the following spring's Aintree Grand National and won that by 12 lengths. Flooring Porter, the 2024 winner, had already won two Cheltenham Stayers' Hurdles (2021 and 2022) before adding a big-field Irish handicap chase to the résumé. Neither result was predictable from the other; they are simply the two names that made Listowel's Wednesday a story outside Ireland.

Ladies Day and the rest of the week

Friday's Ladies Day is the meeting's biggest day by attendance, drawing a crowd in the high twenty-thousands in recent years, built around the William Hill Handicap Hurdle and the McElligotts Kia Best Dressed Lady competition. The two Flat days either side of the Wednesday, Monday and Tuesday, get comparatively little betting-media attention next to the National Hunt cards, but Aidan O'Brien and Joseph O'Brien have both used the meeting's Flat maiden races to debut horses that went on to better things, so the form from those two days is worth a second look rather than skipping straight to Wednesday.

Ten years of Kerry National results is not a large sample by the standards of an Aintree or a Cheltenham roll of honour, but the pattern that does hold is about the connections more than any single running style or trip.

Kerry National: recent winners

Year	Winner	SP	Jockey	Trainer
2025	Spanish Harlem	16/1	Danny Mullins	Willie Mullins
2024	Flooring Porter	6/1	Keith Donoghue	Gavin Cromwell
2023	Desertmore House	11/1	Ricky Doyle	Martin Brassil
2022	Busselton	13/2	J J Slevin	Joseph O'Brien
2021	Assemble	9/1	S Fitzgerald	Joseph O'Brien
2020	Cabaret Queen	6/1	Paul Townend	Willie Mullins
2019	Poker Party	14/1	Rachael Blackmore	Henry de Bromhead
2018	Snow Falcon	6/1	J Moore	Noel Meade
2017	Potters Point	8/1	Lisa O'Neill	Gordon Elliott
2016	Wrath Of Titans	7/1	Lisa O'Neill	Gordon Elliott

Source: listowelraces.ie's official roll of honour and the HRI result for each year. listowelraces.ie's own published list reverses the trainer and jockey credited for the 2024 winner; the table above uses the corrected attribution (Gavin Cromwell trainer, Keith Donoghue jockey) per HRI's race result and subsequent race reports.

No single yard has taken over the race. Willie Mullins, Joseph O'Brien and Gordon Elliott have each won it exactly twice in the ten years above (Mullins with Cabaret Queen in 2020 and Spanish Harlem in 2025, O'Brien with Assemble in 2021 and Busselton in 2022, Elliott with Wrath Of Titans in 2016 and Potters Point in 2017), and no other trainer has repeated. That spread across three of Ireland's biggest jumps operations, with no one stable dominating, is the closest thing to a reliable pattern the race offers: the strength and recent form of the yard behind a runner has mattered here more than any particular running style or trip. On jockeys, only Lisa O'Neill has ridden more than one of the last ten winners, both for Gordon Elliott in 2016 and 2017.

On price, the last ten winners returned everything from 6/1 to 16/1, with three of the ten (2025, 2023, 2019) going off at 11/1 or bigger. Monty's Pass (2002, outside the table above) won it at 9/1 before landing the following year's Grand National, and 2024 winner Flooring Porter had already won two Cheltenham Stayers' Hurdles.

None of this predicts a winner on its own, and a ten-year sample is short enough that a single future result can reshape the picture. What it does say is that the Kerry National rewards a fancied runner from one of the meeting's leading Irish yards over a longshot from a smaller stable, and that the field is deep and competitive enough that the bookmakers' own pricing, not a trend on this page, is still the fairer starting point for judging any individual runner's chance.

How to approach the Kerry National

There is no live pick published on this page. The pattern in the previous section, a fancied runner from one of the meeting's leading Irish yards ahead of an unfancied outsider from a smaller stable, is a way to narrow an 18-plus-runner field, not a system that guarantees a return. In a field that size the each-way terms matter as much as the selection itself: work the both-ends-covered maths through the each-way calculator before committing, and see each-way betting explained if the terms themselves need a refresher. If you are pricing up the market yourself rather than taking the first number offered, understanding odds covers how to read a fraction against the bookmaker's built-in margin.

Where to bet on Listowel

The Listowel Harvest Festival offers page compares what our verified partners offer for the week. Two things matter more than a headline free bet in a big-field handicap like the Kerry National:

• Extra each-way places or a Double Result / First Past the Post payout. In an 18-plus-runner chase, a fourth or fifth place paid, or a payout for the horse that leads home even if it is caught close to the line, turns a place bet from a long shot into a fair one.
• Best Odds Guaranteed on Irish racing specifically. Not every UK-facing bookmaker extends BOG to Irish cards on the same terms as British ones, and Irish prices can move between the morning and the off once the going firms up, so check the Irish-racing small print rather than assuming a UK BOG offer travels across the water.

For a wider view, best free bet offers for horse racing and the best bookmakers for horse racing. For the model's general record against the market, rather than a Listowel-specific card, see the AI Lab's track record; for what a quoted price actually means once the bookmaker's own margin is stripped out, how to read the odds.

After the meeting

Each day's finishing orders and starting prices land in the meeting's results hub as the cards finish; the Listowel Harvest Festival hub links the current edition.

Responsible note

Seven days of racing and a EUR200,000 feature race is a reason to enjoy the week, not a reason to chase a bigger stake than planned. Set what you are prepared to spend before the Wednesday and treat it as entertainment: the odds favour the bookmaker over time regardless of how good a pattern on this page looks. If betting stops being fun, BeGambleAware offers free, confidential support on 0808 8020 133. 18+, please gamble responsibly.