Grand National Betting: The Race and Its Markets

The Grand National is a handicap steeplechase run over the Grand National fences at Aintree, on the final day of a three-day festival in April. The Jockey Club dates the race to "the inaugural running at Aintree Racecourse in 1839", and the racecourse calls the meeting "The Biggest Event in Jump Racing".

This guide covers what the race is and why it behaves differently from the rest of the jumps season. It carries no runners, no prices and no selections.

The Race, in Numbers the Racecourse Publishes

These come from the Jockey Club's own pages for the race, read on 7 October 2026 — the first, second and fourth from its facts and figures page, the third from its page on the fences:

• Distance: "The Grand National race is 4 miles, 2 ½ furlongs."
• Maximum field: "The maximum field size is now 40." The same page records how far that is from the race's history — "66 in 1929, while 57 lined up in 1947".
• Obstacles: "In total there are 16 fences on the Grand National course, 14 of which are jumped twice along the four mile, two and half furlong distance, which is the longest Jump racing distance in the UK." Sixteen plus fourteen is thirty jumps.
• Completions: the facts page records both ends. Most finishers is "23 in 1984, from 40 starters"; smallest is "Two, in 1928 when 42 started". The second figure is the one that shows what the race can do to a field.

Racing over fences at Aintree is older than the race itself: the Jockey Club's fences page has it "Dating back to 1829", and dates individual obstacles later again — Becher's Brook to an 1839 incident, the Water Jump "first introduced in 1841".

Why a Handicap Changes Everything About the Market

The National is a handicap, which means weights are assigned with the intention of giving every runner a chance rather than letting the best horse carry the same weight as the worst. That single fact explains most of what is unusual about betting on it.

A championship race is a test of which horse is best, and fields are small. A handicap is built so the field converges — and the National adds a field of up to 40, the longest jump-racing distance in the UK, and thirty jumps. Set the maximum of 40 runners against a record of 23 finishers and the shape of the race is plain: a great deal can happen to any individual runner that has nothing to do with how good it is.

The Three Days

The dates move within April each year; the 2027 running is listed as "Thursday 8 - Saturday 10 April 2027", with the National on the Saturday. The racecourse describes the opening day — the Thursday — as carrying "a backdrop of incredible Grade One racing", so the meeting matters to the season and not only to the one race.

The Markets Usually Offered

Each-way betting is where the terms matter most on a field this size: the number of places paid and the fraction of the odds applied to the place part are set by the operator in its own rules, not by the racecourse, and two operators can offer different terms on the same race.

Ante-post betting opens long before the field is known. On a handicap that carries a particular wrinkle, because a horse's weight — the thing the handicap is built on — is published after many ante-post bets have been struck. A non-runner no bet concession returns the stake if the horse does not run; without one, a withdrawn horse is a lost stake — and with the field capped at 40, not every entry makes the line-up.

Finishing-position and completion markets matter more here than on most races, for the reason the finisher record makes obvious. How any of them settles — what counts as a finisher, what happens if the race is void, how a tie is treated — is in the operator's rules rather than the racecourse's.

Where It Is Legal to Bet on This

The legal position varies by market. The country guides give it with the licensing regulator for each. Jumps racing covers the discipline and the racing section the other codes.