Dwindling crowds and odds-on horses falling… those have been the two guarantees at the Cheltenham Festival in recent years.
So organisers will launch a charm offensive ahead of the 2026 renewal in a bid to woo punters back to Prestbury Park for the National Hunt’s flagship meeting.
They are aiming to reverse the trend for falling attendances by promising cheaper drinks, new car parking facilities and the return of the popular Ladies Day in a bid to improve the festival’s fortunes.
Horse racing in the UK needs the Cheltenham Festival to be a success in order to yield huge revenues… particularly in the wake of the likely gambling tax increases expected later this year.
Hello Ladies
The raft of changes have been labelled as ‘enhancements to the customer experience’ by officials at the Cheltenham Festival in a bid to win back the crowds lost over the past five years or so.
Organisers did away with the official ‘Ladies Day’ designation on the second day of the meeting back in 2019, with attendances since tumbling on the Wednesday of the festival – a post-2020 peak of 64,431 on the second day of the meeting back in 2022 has since tumbled to 41,949 in 2025… a real terms drop of 34%.
And so Wednesday of the 2026 edition, which is scheduled to take place from March 10-13, will officially be promoted as Ladies Day in a bid to attract more punters back through the turnstiles.
Cost of Drinks to be Reduced
After undertaking extensive research and feedback after the 2025 edition, Cheltenham Festival committee members were bombarded with the view that drink prices were simply too high – a pint of Guinness peaking at an eye-watering £7.80.
Festival organisers have promised to cut back on such daylight robbery in 2026, although the price cut on Guinness – into £7.50 from £7.80, for a saving of 30p per pint – may not be enough to attract hardy veterans back to the four-day extravaganza.
Mind you, considering the price of a pint at Wimbledon (£8.45), the Open Championship (£7.75) and a Lord’s test match (£7.60), Cheltenham is actually on a similar footing.
Prosecco will be stocked in the festival’s fridges for the first time – meaning that an expensive bottle of champagne won’t have to be forked out for when toasting winners, while an additional food court will be available inside a tent, which will provide some much-needed shelter if the weather turns.
Capacity Cut
While Cheltenham is keen to get more punters back on the premises, that won’t come without limitations on numbers. The overall capacity of each will be cut from 68,500 to 66,000, in a bid to free up car parking spaces and shorten queues for the toilets and at food and drink stalls. That follows a similar reduction in 2023, when the daily capacity was trimmed from 74,000 to 68,500.
“We believe that reducing the capacity will not only help ease overcrowding in certain areas on the racecourse, whatever the weather, but also make for a more enjoyable experience for racegoers making their way to and from the racecourse,” reads the official Cheltenham Racecourse statement.
As if all that wasn’t enough, Prestbury Park staff are promising an improved audio-visual experience to racegoers too. That will include enhanced big screen content and changes to PA system announcements on raceday.
One change that won’t be implemented is a cut in ticket price, with Cheltenham CEO Guy Lavender claiming that ‘value for money is not always driven by reducing prices.’
The Numbers Game
The attendances at the 2025 edition were something of a nadir for the Cheltenham Festival in the modern era, with just 41,949 turning up on day two – the lowest daily crowd at the meeting in more than 30 years.
Only one of the four days – Gold Cup Friday – drew a crowd in excess of 55,000, which suggests that plans to limit capacity across the meeting is optimistic at best.
That said, many racegoers on the Friday this year complained of long queues and mammoth waits to get in and out of the car park – and that was with an official attendance of 68,026.
Many festival regulars opted not to attend this year’s meeting, owing to ticket and hospitality prices as well as the cost of accommodation – some even choosing to fly abroad to watch the action on the big screen instead.
All four days of the 2025 meeting were down on the numbers from a year before, with a total attendance of 218,839 – down on the 229,999 that attended in 2024, which in turn was down on the bumper 280,627 crowd of 2022.
Course officials will be hoping that the changes push crowd numbers back in the right direction…