It starts today. Four days, twenty-eight races, and the most concentrated gathering of jump racing talent on the planet. Cheltenham Festival 2026 gets underway on Champion’s Day, and the card wastes no time – a Grade 1 novice hurdle off the mark, a seven-runner Arkle that could define the two-mile chasing landscape for years to come, and a Champion Hurdle in the afternoon that carries genuine intrigue from top to bottom.
The ground is Good To Soft, which is close to ideal for this track and for our data. Cheltenham on Good To Soft is the conditions profile that sits at the heart of five years of festival backtesting, and it is the going on which our convergence filters have produced their strongest returns. Horses with proven form on this ground, at this course, at this time of year are exactly the profile the model is built to find.
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