Ticket sales for the 2026 festival meeting at Cheltenham are ahead of the levels at the same point 12 months ago and there is growing confidence at the track that attendance will be up at next month’s showpiece meeting after sharp declines over the past three seasons.
This year’s festival, which opens on 10 March, will be the second since Guy Lavender took over as Cheltenham’s chief executive at the start of 2025, but the first at which it should be possible to assess the effect of a range of initiatives to improve the customer experience that have been introduced over the last 15 months.
