Glorious Goodwood 2027: Dates, Big Races and Betting Guide
By the MyHorseBets team · Updated · 12 min read
Glorious Goodwood 2027 takes place from Tuesday 27 to Saturday 31 July 2027 at Goodwood Racecourse in West Sussex. Officially called the Qatar Goodwood Festival, it is five days of Flat racing with three Group 1 races: the Goodwood Cup, the Sussex Stakes and the Nassau Stakes, plus the Stewards’ Cup, one of the biggest betting handicaps of the summer. One thing to clear up first: this is the horse racing festival, not the Goodwood Festival of Speed, which is a motorsport event held on the same estate earlier in July (15 to 18 July 2027, according to Goodwood).
This page sets out the Glorious Goodwood dates, what is run on each day, how the course shapes the racing, how to watch, and how each way betting works in the meeting’s big-field handicaps. We don’t publish tips or selections. When Goodwood publishes the 2027 race programme, we update this page and log the change at the bottom.
When Is Glorious Goodwood 2027?
Goodwood’s own Qatar Goodwood Festival page gives the 2027 dates as 27 to 31 July 2027, which is Tuesday to Saturday. The meeting always runs over five days in late July or early August; in 2026 it ran from Tuesday 28 July to Saturday 1 August.
| Day | Date | Day name in 2026 | Feature race in 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | Tuesday 27 July 2027 | Goodwood Cup Day | Goodwood Cup (Group 1) |
| Day 2 | Wednesday 28 July 2027 | Sussex Stakes Day | Sussex Stakes (Group 1) |
| Day 3 | Thursday 29 July 2027 | Ladies’ Day | Nassau Stakes (Group 1) |
| Day 4 | Friday 30 July 2027 | King George Day | King George Qatar Stakes (Group 2) |
| Day 5 | Saturday 31 July 2027 | Stewards’ Cup Day | Stewards’ Cup (Heritage Handicap) |
The 2027 dates are confirmed by Goodwood. The day names and feature races in the table are those of the 2026 festival, taken from Goodwood’s day-by-day guide. When we checked on 2 October 2026, Goodwood had published the 2027 dates but not the 2027 race programme, so treat the order of races as the 2026 pattern until the official programme appears.
Why It Is Called Glorious Goodwood
Racing at Goodwood dates back to 1802, according to Wikipedia’s history of the racecourse, and the summer meeting became the highlight of the course’s year. Goodwood itself tells the story of King Edward VII, who turned his back on the traditional morning suit and wore a linen suit and Panama hat instead; in Goodwood’s words, “thus the Glorious Goodwood trend was born”. He also called the meeting “a garden party with racing tacked on”, a line the course still quotes.
Glorious Goodwood Is Not the Festival of Speed
Search for “Goodwood festival” and you’ll find two very different events on the same Sussex estate. The Festival of Speed is a motoring event, which Goodwood describes as “motorsport’s ultimate summer garden party”, and in 2027 it runs 15 to 18 July. Glorious Goodwood, the subject of this page, is the horse racing festival that starts nine days later.
The Five Days: Race by Race
Each afternoon in 2026 had seven or eight races, with the first at 1.50pm, according to Sporting Life’s results. The 13 Group races that Goodwood mentions break down across the week as follows (grades and distances from the 2026 cards).
Tuesday: Goodwood Cup Day
The opener is built around the Goodwood Cup, a Group 1 over two miles for horses aged three and older. Wikipedia notes it was raised to Group 1 in 2017 and is the second leg of the Stayers’ Triple Crown, between the Gold Cup at Royal Ascot and the Doncaster Cup. The same card has two Group 2 races over seven furlongs: the Vintage Stakes for two-year-olds and the Lennox Stakes for older horses. According to Goodwood, the day ends with a cricket match in front of Goodwood House.
Wednesday: Sussex Stakes Day
The Sussex Stakes is the meeting’s centrepiece: a Group 1 over one mile, open to horses aged three and older, so the season’s top three-year-old milers can meet their elders. Goodwood calls it the “Duel On The Downs”. Wednesday also has the Group 3 Molecomb Stakes over five furlongs for two-year-olds and the Group 3 Oak Tree Stakes for fillies and mares. In 2026 the same card’s Charlton Handicap, over six furlongs, had 26 runners.
Thursday: Ladies’ Day
Thursday’s Group 1 is the Nassau Stakes for fillies and mares, over one mile, one furlong and 197 yards. Wikipedia explains the name honours the friendship between the 5th Duke of Richmond and the House of Orange-Nassau. The card also includes the Group 2 Richmond Stakes over six furlongs for two-year-olds, the Group 3 Gordon Stakes for three-year-olds, and the Magnolia Cup, in which 12 female riders compete.
Friday and Saturday: King George Day and Stewards’ Cup Day
Friday’s feature is the King George Qatar Stakes, a Group 2 sprint over five furlongs, and its betting race is the Golden Mile, a heritage handicap over a mile that had 18 runners in 2026. Saturday is built around the Stewards’ Cup, a six-furlong heritage handicap that Goodwood calls “one of the most prestigious, valuable and competitive handicaps of the season”, alongside the Group 2 Lillie Langtry Stakes and the Group 3 Glorious Stakes.
The Big Races Explained
Three Group 1s and one huge handicap carry most of the week’s attention. Here is what each one is and why it matters to anyone following the meeting.
Sussex Stakes
Wikipedia records the Sussex Stakes as first run in 1841, as a six-furlong race for two-year-olds. It became a one-mile race for three-year-olds in 1878, and has been open to older horses since 1960 (four-year-olds) and 1975 (five and older). Goodwood’s December 2025 announcement put the 2026 race at £1 million; its festival page now bills the race as “the £1.5 million Visit Qatar Sussex Stakes”. In 2026, the Racing Post reported that Bow Echo became the first horse since Frankel to win the 2,000 Guineas, St James’s Palace Stakes and Sussex Stakes in the same season.
Goodwood Cup and Nassau Stakes
The Goodwood Cup is the staying championship of the week: two miles, Group 1, worth £500,000 in 2026 according to Goodwood. Scandinavia won it in 2025 and 2026. The Nassau, worth £600,000 in 2026, is the Group 1 for fillies and mares; Goodwood describes its distance as about a mile and a quarter. Both fields were small in 2026: Sporting Life’s results show eight runners in the Goodwood Cup and five in the Nassau. If you want to picture these distances, our guide to how many furlongs are in a mile has the conversions.
Stewards’ Cup
The Stewards’ Cup was conceived by Lord George Bentinck in late 1839 and first run in 1840, according to Wikipedia. It is a handicap for three-year-olds and older over the straight six furlongs, and it attracts huge fields: 28 horses were declared in 2026, per the Racing Post, and 27 ran. The last five winners show why it is a race for big prices:
| Year | Winner | Starting price |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | Evening Saigon | 16/1 |
| 2025 | Two Tribes | 11/2 |
| 2024 | Get It | 40/1 |
| 2023 | Aberama Gold | 18/1 |
| 2022 | Commanche Falls | 25/1 |
Winners and prices from the Stewards’ Cup records on Wikipedia, checked on 2 October 2026. Past prices say nothing about next year’s result; they show how open a 27-runner sprint handicap is.
The Goodwood Course: Undulating and Tight
Goodwood races are run on one of the most unusual tracks in Britain, and the shape of the course is part of every conversation about the meeting.
The Layout
Wikipedia describes Goodwood as having a straight six furlongs, known as the Stewards’ Cup Course, which is “uphill for the first furlong and mostly downhill thereafter”, and a tight right-handed loop at the far end, with severe undulations and sharp turns. Anything further than the straight six furlongs has to take in bends and changes of gradient, so horses need to handle the track as well as run fast. The course sits five miles north of Chichester, on the Sussex Downs.
The Draw in the Stewards’ Cup
In a big sprint handicap, the stall a horse starts from can matter, and the Stewards’ Cup draw is followed closely: in 2026 it was made at midday two days before the race. Ahead of the 2026 running, the Racing Post noted that “eight of the last ten Stewards’ Cup winners have been in the high-numbers half of the draw, but the two from single-figure stalls were both winning favourites.” That is a historical pattern, not a rule, and ground conditions on the day can change it.
How to Watch Glorious Goodwood
On TV
In Goodwood’s 2024 broadcast release, the course said UK and Ireland audiences “will be served by ITV, Virgin Media, Racing TV”, and Wikipedia’s racecourse article lists ITV Racing and Racing TV as Goodwood’s broadcasters. The 2027 TV schedule has not been published yet, so check the listings closer to the week.
At the Course
Goodwood has three enclosures for the festival: the Richmond (for Goodwood Horseracing Club members), the Gordon and the Lennox. For 2026, Goodwood’s ticket release gave prices from £21 for the Lennox Enclosure and £47 for the Gordon Enclosure. 2027 prices were not published when we checked.
Dress Code
Goodwood’s dress code page sets out the rules by enclosure. In the Richmond Enclosure, men aged 16 and over must wear a suit jacket, a long-sleeved collared shirt, a tie and full-length trousers, and fancy dress and sportswear are not permitted. In the Gordon Enclosure there is no formal dress code, though during the festival guests are encouraged to dress smartly, and shorts and trainers are permitted. The Lennox Enclosure is the most relaxed. Goodwood’s page does not mention jeans either way, so if you plan to wear them, the Gordon or Lennox is the safer choice and the Richmond is not.
Betting on Glorious Goodwood
The meeting mixes small, high-class Group 1 fields with some of the biggest handicaps of the Flat season, and those two kinds of race behave very differently for a bettor.
Group Races Versus Big-Field Handicaps
Small Group 1 fields often go the way of the market. The Racing Post described Sussex Stakes day in 2026 as “a procession of winning favourites”, with six of the seven races won by the favourite. The handicaps are the opposite. In 2026 the Stewards’ Cup had 27 runners, the Charlton Handicap 26 and the Golden Mile 18, and in a handicap the official handicapper assigns weights to bring the horses closer together. Our guide to what a handicap horse race is explains how the weights are set.
Each Way Terms and Extra Places
Under standard UK terms, set out in Sky Bet’s horse racing rules, a handicap with 16 or more runners pays 1/4 of the odds for the first four places, while a non-handicap with eight or more runners pays 1/5 for three. The terms are fixed by the horses that come under starter’s orders, not by the field when you bet. For big Goodwood handicaps, some bookmakers offer extra places: a fifth or sixth place paid as a promotion. Sky Bet’s rules note that such concessions can be changed or withdrawn, and may come at a different fraction from the standard one. Always check the terms on your slip. Our guide to each way betting covers the full table.
Worked Example: £4 Each Way in a 27-Runner Handicap
Say you back a horse at 16/1 in a Stewards’ Cup-sized field, £4 each way, with standard terms of 1/4 the odds for four places. The bet costs £8. The place odds are 16/1 x 1/4 = 4/1.
| Result | Win half | Place half | Total return | Profit or loss |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wins | £4 x 16 = £64, plus £4 = £68 | £4 x 4 = £16, plus £4 = £20 | £88 | £80 profit |
| Finishes 2nd, 3rd or 4th | £0 | £20 | £20 | £12 profit |
| Finishes 5th (standard terms) | £0 | £0 | £0 | £8 loss |
| Finishes 5th with an extra place at 1/5 | £0 | £4 x 16/5 = £12.80, plus £4 = £16.80 | £16.80 | £8.80 profit |
The last row shows why the fraction matters: an extra place paid at 1/5 turns fifth into a profit, but it pays less for second to fourth than the standard 1/4 would. Run your own numbers through our each way calculator with the exact terms on your slip.
Multiples, Non-Runners and Ante-Post Bets
Five days of racing invites multiples: a Lucky 15 calculator shows what four selections across the card return, and the dutching calculator splits a stake across two or more horses in the same race. Big fields also mean late withdrawals, and if a horse is pulled out after you took a price, the Rule 4 calculator shows the deduction. Betting months ahead carries its own risks, which our guide to ante-post betting explains. Whatever you bet, set a budget for the whole week before Tuesday, and treat it as the cost of the entertainment.
Update Log
We update this page as the festival approaches. Dates are when we checked the official sources.
- 2 October 2026: Page published with the 2027 dates (27 to 31 July 2027) from Goodwood’s Qatar Goodwood Festival page, and the day-by-day pattern and feature races from the 2026 festival (Goodwood’s day-by-day guide and Sporting Life’s 2026 results). The 2027 race programme, race times and ticket prices were not yet published.
We will next update the page when Goodwood publishes the 2027 race programme, and again when the fields for the big races are declared in the days before each race.
Frequently asked questions
Glorious Goodwood 2027 runs from Tuesday 27 to Saturday 31 July 2027, according to Goodwood's official festival page. It is always a five-day meeting, Tuesday to Saturday, in late July or early August, and the 2026 edition ran from 28 July to 1 August.
Goodwood's dress code does not mention jeans. The Richmond Enclosure requires men to wear a jacket, collared shirt, tie and full-length trousers, so jeans are a poor fit there. The Gordon has no formal code and allows shorts and trainers, and the Lennox is the most relaxed enclosure.
The Festival of Speed runs from 15 to 18 July 2027, according to Goodwood. It is a motorsport event, not horse racing. The horse racing festival, Glorious Goodwood, follows later that month, from Tuesday 27 to Saturday 31 July 2027.
Both Goodwood festivals take place on the Goodwood Estate in West Sussex. The racecourse, home of Glorious Goodwood, sits about five miles north of Chichester on the Sussex Downs. The Festival of Speed, a motoring event, is held in the parkland around Goodwood House.
Goodwood had not published 2027 prices when we checked in October 2026. As a guide, tickets for the 2026 festival started at £21 for the Lennox Enclosure and £47 for the Gordon Enclosure, while the Richmond Enclosure is for Goodwood Horseracing Club members.
The three Group 1 races are the Goodwood Cup over two miles, the Sussex Stakes over a mile and the Nassau Stakes for fillies and mares. The Stewards' Cup, a six-furlong sprint handicap with a huge field, and the Golden Mile handicap are the meeting's biggest betting races.