16–19 Mar 2027 · Horse Racing

Hotels for Cheltenham Festival 2027

Name: Cheltenham Festival 2027
Start: 2027-03-16T00:00:00.000Z
End: 2027-03-19T23:59:59.000Z
Location: Cheltenham

At Cheltenham, Cheltenham running 16–19 Mar 2027. 228 hotels within 3km — book close and make a trip of it.

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About Cheltenham Festival 2027

The Cheltenham Festival is the pinnacle of jump racing — four days of championship contests in the Cotswolds every March, building to the Gold Cup, in an atmosphere no other meeting can match. The famous 'Cheltenham roar' as the first race starts, the Irish invasion and the packed enclosures make it a bucket-list occasion for any racing fan, and the elegant Regency town of Cheltenham fills to bursting. Rooms across Cheltenham and the surrounding Cotswolds are booked out months ahead, so plan early. Stay in town or in a nearby Cotswold village and you're close to the course, the buzzing festival pubs, and some of England's prettiest countryside.

History

The Cheltenham Festival grew out of the National Hunt Meeting, a travelling jump-racing fixture that first ran in 1860 and moved between different courses each year before settling permanently at Prestbury Park in 1911. What began as a single race day has grown into the four-day peak of the jump season, built around the Cheltenham Gold Cup. Its best-known tradition needs no date to explain it: the 'Cheltenham roar', the wall of noise that greets the tape going up for the first race of the week, as thousands of racegoers — a huge number of them travelling over from Ireland for the meeting — let go of a year's anticipation in one go. No other jump meeting anywhere produces quite that sound.

Records & quirks

Golden Miller's five Gold Cup wins, from 1932 to 1936, remain the record — no horse has matched it since.
Best Mate (2002–04), Arkle (1964–66) and Cottage Rake (1948–50) are the only other horses with three straight Gold Cups.
Gold Cup Friday is the Festival's best-attended day, regularly drawing around 68,000 racegoers.