Five days of fashion, food, fun and racing ahead at Punchestown

Billed as “A world apart but on your doorstep” the five day 2026 Punchestown Festival begins when the white flag is raised for The Kildare Hunt Club Cross Country Chase at 2.30pm on Tuesday (27 April) and it concludes when the runners and riders cross the line around 6.45pm at the end of The 35th Running of the Punchestown Kidney race on Saturday evening, 2 May. In between we will witness 38 other races including 12 Grade 1’s all for a prize money in excess of €3.6m. It is also the culmination of the Irish National Hunt season with the leading trainers, jockeys and owners vying for top honours as the season draws to an exciting close.

They’ll come from far and wide but the Punchestown Festival is our Festival and it will never lose that Lilywhite tradition like the Cross Country Chase and the La Touche Cup. Cork people may sing about “The Banks” but the real banks are to be seen in Punchestown.

After such a successful Festival in 2025, Punchestown Racecourse Manager, Conor O’Neill, is looking forward to an even bigger event this year. 

“We had a phenomenal 2025 Festival,” O’Neill, who was born a stone’s throw for the track, told The Kildare Nationalist as he prepared to meet his team to put the final touches to the 2026 event. 

“Never did we think that we would bask in five days of sunshine as opposed to people running out in the rain after the last race. It was fabulous to see a queue for the ice cream van an hour afterwards,” he laughs.

 “As we look ahead to the 2026 Festival who would have thought we would be back here again looking forward to the week of five dry days of racing.” 

 Continuing O’Neill said, “The success of last year gave us a fabulous foundation to continue to build and develop the Festival. I have a fantastic team around me and they put so much pride and passion and effort into it and I was so delighted to see it all come to fruition. It has really motivated and drove us on to make 2026 even bigger and better. My hardest job in the past week was getting my team to go home from work.” 

Among those on The Punchestown Team is Kildare senior footballer, Harry O’Neill, and the Clane clubman will be busy, not only with the Festival but also in preparing to meet Westmeath in the Leinster SFC semi-final in Tullamore on Sunday afternoon next.

“We have made plenty of changes across the board to keep things fresh in terms of our entertainment schedule, in terms of our structure right throughout the site,” the General Manager tells us. 

“We have a record-breaking Prize Fund of over €3.6m, over 40 races, including 12 Grade 1’s. Thankfully from a commercial point of view all the indications are that we are in for a huge Festival. Already we are 11% ahead of ticket sales compared to last year,” O’Neill said enthusiastically.

“From a Corporate Hospitality point of view, we have added an additional 2,500 seats across the week this year making it up to 22,000 Corporate Hospitality seats and I’m delighted to say that Punchestown is Ireland’s largest Corporate Hospitality event. We have 63 Commercial Partners involved of which 26 are Co Kildare based, including a new sponsor in Stables Restaurant in Naas,” Conor O’Neill added.

Locals, nationals and internationals will flock to Kildare’s Premier National Hunt venue this week, something that is not lost on Conor O’Neill. 

“We say it time and time again, it is the people who make Punchestown and we are so fortunate to have such tradition in the local community and that’s what differentiates Punchestown and makes Punchestown the success that it is,” he said. 

“The fact that we have brought the start time back to 2.30pm every day except Friday, where we are off at 3.40pm, has really helped the local business community in the town of Naas and surrounding towns.” 

It is not all left to the Kildare residents or indeed the Irish in general as the involvement of overseas visitors, especially from the UK, is vital to the success of the Festival as the General Manager explains. 

“Obviously the UK involvement is integral to the success of the Festival and we are hoping for a renewal of rivalries from the big Festival at Cheltenham and Aintree. Last year we were absolutely delighted that we had 66 UK runners with eight winners which was the same amount of winners that the UK had in Cheltenham last year. It has been a key focus of ours and the UK been our biggest growth market. Over 20% of our attendance across the week is from the UK which is very important for the local economy explains,” O’Neill explains.

The extremely wet conditions in the early months of the year followed by the current dry spell make it a challenging week for the Punchestown on-track team as Conor O’Neill further explains, “there is added pressure that we deliver the very best racing surface, one that is safe and one that ensures that we can attract the top calibre of horses from both sides of the Irish sea. We have the best in the business,” 

O’Neill says of his on-track team led by Racing Manager, Richie Galway. “We are watering at the moment but we only had to start that a lot later than we normally would due to the early season rain.” 

Different profiles of audiences attend Punchestown throughout the week with the “hardened” local racegoers and UK attendees very much to the fore during the first three days with a more social audience coming out for the closing days of the Festival. Style, though, is very much in evidence throughout the week with the Bollinger Best Dressed Competition always a highlight.

Day 1 on the Tuesday will feature William Hill Champion Chase while the Ladbrokes Punchestown Gold Cup is on Day 2. The Ladbrokes Champion Stayers Hurdle is the feature on Day 3 with the Boodles Champion Hurdle taking place on the Friday. Saturday sees the Festival wind up with lots of family fun.

As well as winners in individual races at stake over the week, Punchestown 2026 witnesses the conclusion of the Irish Jumps season and the various championships that it entails. Willie Mullins and Gordon Elliott are vying, as usual, for the Trainers Championship while Jack Kennedy and Darragh O’Keeffe are battling for the Champion Jockey title.

“From a racing point of view I’m really looking forward to the Ladbrokes Punchestown Gold Cup. It is the really big race of the week and one of the highlights on the Wednesday. The La Touche obviously is unique to Punchestown. The banks are part of the Punchestown tradition and a spectator favourite and my personal highlight of the week from a racing point of view. Jockeys, horses and everyone getting home safe is most important. From a Festival point of view, I hoping that we are all going to be basking in five glorious days of sunshine and that everyone who goes to Punchestown this week really enjoys the Punchestown experience and what it has to offer and that everyone goes home safe and we can look forward to going again in 2027,” Conor O’Neill concludes.