Three days of world-famous jump racing at Aintree, culminating in the greatest steeplechase on earth.
The Grand National Festival at Aintree is one of the great occasions in British sport, and at the heart of it sits the most famous horse race on earth. Run over roughly four miles and thirty fences, the Grand National is not just a test of speed but an epic examination of stamina, jumping, and sheer will. Hundreds of millions of people around the world watch it every year, many of them with no other connection to racing at all. That is how powerful this race is.
The Grand National was first run in 1839, making it one of the oldest races in the world. What sets Aintree apart from every other racecourse is its fences. They are bigger, stiffer, and more punishing than anything horses face anywhere else in racing. The Chair, a towering obstacle mid-race, and Becher's Brook, which drops sharply on the landing side, have become famous far beyond the racing world. Horses that win here earn a place in history. Red Rum did it three times across the 1970s. Tiger Roll won back-to-back in 2018 and 2019. Many Clouds claimed the prize in 2015. These are names that endure.
In 2026 the festival runs for a single day on 11 April, with the five hundred thousand pound Randox Grand National itself the centrepiece. The headline contender to watch is I Am Maximus, a horse with the talent and profile to challenge seriously for glory. The field will be large and the race unpredictable, as it almost always is, which is exactly why the world stops to watch. Aintree on Grand National day is a genuinely unique sporting spectacle, and there is nothing quite like it anywhere else.