By Brian Flanagan

Copyright irishmirror

Eight years after the pubs were allowed to open, Ireland is set to host its first ever race meeting on Good Friday next April.

Horse Racing Ireland have announced that history will be made with a Good Friday meeting taking place at the Curragh on April 3 in 2026.

As it stands, betting shops in Ireland are not permitted to open on Good Friday under existing legislation but Irish Bookmakers Association chairperson Sharon Byrne has said that the organisation is keen for this to be reviewed.

Pubs in Ireland were allowed serve alcohol on Good Friday for the first time in 90 years after a ban on alcohol sales on the religious holiday was lifted in 2018.

Britain opened up its racecourses on Good Friday back in 2014 and it’s now a traditional big day of all-weather racing at venues like Lingfield, Newcastle and Chelmsford.

Horse Racing has been an outlier in terms of other sports with fixtures on Good Friday, as well as other racing jurisdictions, and the fixture was awarded on a two-year trial basis.

Rugby matches and League of Ireland fixtures are commonplace on Good Friday and this move now opens the opportunity for racing to attract business on the first day of the Easter weekend.

It will come from the Curragh’s current allocation and therefore will see the Curragh revert to a two-day Guineas meeting in 2026.

The fixture was announced as part of the HRI’s list of 391 race meetings for Ireland in 2026.

Jonathan Mullin, HRI’s Director of Racing, said: “The Good Friday fixture is a change of policy for Horse Racing Ireland and once the HRI Fixtures Committee reaffirmed their view at the outset of the process that this was a priority for 2026, we sought applications from racecourses and several expressed an interest.

“Ultimately the successful application came from the Curragh, which will include a number of community and industry initiatives as well as a considerable investment in extra prize money.

“Throughout 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.

“It 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.

“With no increase in fixtures in 2026 this meeting had to come from an applicant track’s current allocation, and so this will effectively mean the Curragh’s Guineas weekend in May will revert to a two-day meeting.

“The 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.

“This 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.

“Concentrating Thurles fixtures in the period of the calendar when Thurles has excelled as a racetrack, and when National Hunt horses of all levels seek the opportunity to run, seemed a prudent move in the circumstances and we are grateful to the Molony Family and Thurles’ new clerk of the course Paul Moloney for their flexibility.”