Cheltenham Festival 2026: What is the ground going to be like?

Ground staff at Cheltenham racecourse have been trying for many years to get the ground as close to good to soft as possible and they achieve their aim more often than not.

They won't be able to please everyone, but hopefully conditions will be as fair as possible.

After a particularly wet start to the year, a relatively dry couple of weeks should enable the clerk of the course to have conditions where he wants them when the Festival kicks off on Tuesday.

Here we take a look at what the going is likely to be throughout the week.

Good to soft is on the cards

Jon Pullin is the man with the unenviable job of producing a perfect surface for the Cheltenham Festival and he sounds very confident that conditions will be somewhere near the targeted good to soft description. Those wanting soft ground might be a little disappointed, but it's impossible to please everyone!

Pullin spoke on Sky Sports Racing recently and said: "We always aim to start the Festival with good to soft as the lead description and, with the weather we've got, it looks like we will be somewhere around that."

Cheltenham has excellent drainage and does dry out rather quickly and, although the ground has been quite soft over the last couple of weeks, the latest update is a blanket description of good to soft and staff will be working to maintain that for racing on Tuesday.

Racing on the first two days takes place on the Old Course, where the going is good to soft, while the New Course is a tad quicker with some good in description there.

Watering will be required between now and Thursday to get it back to good to soft but that will be the target.

Weather forecast

Friday is going to be a largely dry but cloudy day, with the potential of a little bit of rain in the evening.

There's not much rain on the agenda for Saturday at the time of writing and conditions look set to be fairly similar on Sunday too.

The sun could come out in the Cheltenham area on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, which means ground staff will be watering overnight to maintain but the going could end up on the quicker side at some stage during the first couple of days.

Light rain is anticipated on Thursday, but John Pullin will probably want it to be a bit heavier than that.

Watering can cause the ground to be a bit sticky, so hopefully there's going to be enough natural rain around to prevent rapid ground.