Founder & Editor · Last reviewed 2026-09-01
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See the St Leger Festival live hubThe weekend of 12 and 13 September
The St Leger is run at Doncaster on Saturday 12 September 2026. The Irish St Leger is run at the Curragh on Sunday 13 September. Two Group 1 races, a day apart, over the same trip of a mile and six furlongs, sharing a name that goes back to the same eighteenth-century original. It is the one weekend of the year when the two staying championships sit back to back, and most previews treat them as separate events in separate countries.
They are worth reading together, because the races are not doing the same job.
Doncaster's Saturday is the fourth and final day of the St Leger Festival, which runs from Thursday 10 September. The Curragh's Sunday is the second day of the Irish Champions Festival, which opens at Leopardstown on the Saturday with the Irish Champion Stakes and the Matron Stakes. So the Saturday is a crowded afternoon: the last British Classic of the season at Town Moor in the afternoon, and Ireland's biggest raceday of the year running alongside it.
For the meetings themselves, the St Leger Festival tips page covers the four days at Doncaster and how the Classic is usually won, and the Irish Champions Festival tips page covers the two days across Leopardstown and the Curragh. This page is about the pair of races that share the name, and what the difference between them tells you.
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Same name, same trip, different race
The difference is one line in the conditions, and it changes everything about how each race is won.
The St Leger at Doncaster is for three-year-olds only. It is a Classic, the oldest of the five, first run in 1776 over 1m 6f 115y. A horse gets one attempt at it in its life. The field is a single generation, meeting at the end of the season that defined them, and the question is which of this year's crop actually stays the trip.
The Irish St Leger at the Curragh is open to three-year-olds and upwards. It was opened to older horses and has run in that form since, over 1m 6f, and that makes it something closer to Europe's staying championship at the distance than a Classic in the British sense. Fillies and mares get a 3lb allowance. A horse can win it more than once, and horses do.
That single condition produces two different races. Doncaster gets an untested generation asking a question none of them have answered before. The Curragh gets hardened older stayers, some of whom have been answering it for years, and the three-year-olds have to beat them.
What the records show
St Leger Stakes: Recent Winners
Group 1 (Classic) · 1m 6f 115y · 3yo colts and fillies (no geldings) · Doncaster · September
| Year | Winner | Age | SP | Jockey | Trainer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Scandinavia | 3 | 2/1 | Tom Marquand | Aidan O'Brien |
| 2024 | Jan Brueghel | 3 | 11/4 | S M Levey | Aidan O'Brien |
| 2023 | Continuous | 3 | — | — | Aidan O'Brien |
| 2022 | Eldar Eldarov | 3 | — | — | — |
| 2021 | Hurricane Lane | 3 | — | — | — |
| 2020 | Galileo Chrome | 3 | — | — | — |
| 2019 | Logician | 3 | — | — | — |
| 2018 | Kew Gardens | 3 | — | — | — |
| 2017 | Capri | 3 | — | — | — |
| 2016 | Harbour Law | 3 | — | — | — |
Trends
- A stamina test - Aidan O'Brien has dominated recently with three in a row (2023-2025).
- 2025 winner Scandinavia (2/1f, Marquand/O'Brien) had also won the Goodwood Cup that season and went on to win the Royal Ascot Gold Cup 2026 - a top stayer's progression.
- Rahiebb (2nd in the 2025 St Leger at 14/1) later ran in the 2026 Royal Ascot Gold Cup.
Source-verified from official records. Last checked 2026-07-01.
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.
Both tables are read from our source-verified race records, so they show what the records hold and nothing more. Where a starting price or a rider is blank, we have not verified it rather than filled it in.
Read the two lists next to each other and the structural difference shows up immediately. Every British St Leger winner in the record is a three-year-old, because it cannot be anything else. The Irish list runs through four-year-olds, five-year-olds and six-year-olds.
Kyprios won the Irish St Leger in 2022 as a four-year-old and again in 2024 as a six-year-old, both for Aidan O'Brien and Ryan Moore. That is a career shape the Doncaster race does not permit: a proven stayer coming back at the same target across seasons and beating the next generation twice. The 2025 running went to the five-year-old Al Riffa, for Joseph O'Brien and Dylan Browne McMonagle.
At Doncaster the recent pattern has run the other way, towards one yard. Aidan O'Brien has won the last three St Legers, with Continuous in 2023, Jan Brueghel in 2024 and Scandinavia in 2025. Three in a row is a real pattern in a race where the same trainer keeps identifying which of his three-year-olds will stay, but it is three runnings, and three runnings is a small sample to bet from on its own.
Reading the two together
The practical use of the pairing is that the Saturday race tells you something about the Sunday one, and about the following season.
A three-year-old that wins or runs well at Doncaster has proved it stays a mile and six at the end of a hard campaign. That is the exact quality the Curragh race asks for, and it is why Leger form keeps turning up in staying races afterwards. Scandinavia won the 2025 St Leger and went on to win the Gold Cup at Royal Ascot in 2026. Rahiebb, who was second at Doncaster in 2025, also lined up in that Gold Cup. The horses who fill the frame in the last British Classic are the raw material for the next year's staying division, which is a good argument for paying attention to the placed horses and not only the winner.
The reverse read is weaker and worth being honest about. A good older stayer winning at the Curragh tells you about that horse, not about the three-year-olds it beat, and it does not tell you much about Doncaster the following September. The Irish race is a championship where the best proven stayer usually turns up and wins; the British race is a puzzle about which unproven horse becomes one.
Where the value tends to sit
Neither race is a soft market. Both are Group 1s watched closely by people who have followed the staying division all summer, and the favourite in each has a strong recent record. Al Riffa went off at 4/5 in the 2025 Irish St Leger and Kyprios at 2/5 in 2024, which tells you how well the market reads a race where the best horse is already known. A short price and a bet at that price are different things.
Where the two races differ is in what can be mispriced. At the Curragh the mistake is usually made on the three-year-old: a Classic-generation horse taking on established stayers for the first time, priced on its Doncaster reputation rather than on whether it is ready to beat an older champion. At Doncaster the mistake is usually made on the Derby type stepping up in trip, where the step from a mile and a half to a mile and six is the one that finds out a brilliant horse who does not quite stay.
If you are betting either, the non-runner-no-bet terms matter more than the headline price, because both races lose intended runners late and the Irish alternative is a real reason a Doncaster entry disappears. The St Leger offers and Irish Champions Festival offers pages carry the verified terms for each.
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