Hotels for Kentucky Derby 2027

Fans arrive in seersucker and bold hats, juleps in hand, filling the grounds hours before post time. Expect brass bands, betting windows three-deep, and the low hum of a crowd that treats horse racing as theatre as much as sport. By the time the gates open, the whole city has shifted its rhythm around the track.

The Kentucky Derby is the most famous horse race in the United States, run on the first Saturday in May at Churchill Downs in Louisville. First contested in 1875, it was the creation of Meriwether Lewis Clark Jr, who took his inspiration from the Epsom Derby and Longchamp in Europe. The race is the opening leg of America's Triple Crown, followed by the Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes, and is restricted to three-year-old thoroughbreds who run a mile and a quarter on dirt.

Its winner is draped in a garland of more than 400 roses, which gives the race its nickname, the Run for the Roses, and the fastest recognised time belongs to the great Secretariat, whose 1973 record still stands. Around the racing, mint juleps, extravagant hats and a stirring rendition of 'My Old Kentucky Home' before the off make Derby day one of the great occasions in the American sporting and social calendar.