{"id":436304,"date":"2025-09-19T14:49:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T14:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/436304\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T14:49:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T14:49:09","slug":"curragh-to-stage-first-good-friday-racing-meeting-in-ireland-next-year-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/436304\/","title":{"rendered":"Curragh to stage first Good Friday racing meeting in Ireland next year \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Racing<\/a> will take place in Ireland on Good Friday for the first time in 2026 with the Curragh<\/a> set to stage a fixture on April 3rd.<\/p>\n

Horse Racing Ireland (HRI) published the new fixture list with the number of meetings staying the same for the third successive year.<\/p>\n

The Flat season will see an enhanced programme of Sunday fixtures beginning in May, while there will be seven blank Sundays in total \u2013 one more than in 2025.<\/p>\n

Racing on Good Friday will come from the current allocation of fixtures at the Curragh which will mean the Guineas meeting will revert to two days for 2026. <\/p>\n

The Good Friday meeting is on an initial two-year trial basis.<\/p>\n

There will be a condensed National Hunt season at Thurles to allow for more prudent ground preparation \u2013 moving one fixture from mid-March into late January and two fixtures in October to November and December. Fixtures at Thurles post March 2026 have been labelled \u201cto be confirmed\u201d until the future of Thurles is resolved.<\/p>\n

There are 11 fixtures allocated to Tipperary from April to October but once the track\u2019s all-weather projects proceeds, some of these will be reallocated.<\/p>\n

Jonathan Mullin, HRI\u2019s director of racing, said: \u201cThroughout the fixture process, we were very conscious that a number of summer weekends, and in particular Sundays, needed a better-quality Flat offering and the fixture list for 2026 features a number of changes to reflect that aim.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt can be seen from tweaks made to the winter National Hunt programme over the past couple of years, that consecutive Sundays of quality racing works well in terms of promotion and awareness, and returning some Flat fixtures of high quality to the Sunday roster has been brought about for 2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Thurles racecourse to remain open until next March as HRI take on operational responsibilityOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

He added that the Good Friday fixture was \u201ca change of policy for Horse Racing Ireland\u201d and that after expressions of interests from several race courses, the Curragh was chosen as the successful applicant. Mr Mullin also said it would \u201cinclude a number of community and industry initiatives as well as a considerable investment in extra prize money\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fixture list for 2026 also sees some movement in fixtures at Thurles to assist with ground management there as well as concentrating those fixtures in a time of the year when Thurles is seen to its best. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis was an option we had raised with Thurles in early summer before their announcement to step away from the business and continued to make sense after the discussions had taken place between the Molony family, HRI and AIR to keep Thurles operational right through this season to March 2026.\u201d – Agency<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Racing will take place in Ireland on Good Friday for the first time in 2026 with the Curragh…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":436305,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4107],"tags":[288,102871,86000,1071,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-436304","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-racing","8":"tag-horse-racing","9":"tag-horse-racing-ireland-hri","10":"tag-kildare","11":"tag-racing","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115231520601822609","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436304\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/436305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}