Southwell stages more than fifty fixtures a year, making it one of the busiest racecourses in the country. The Southwell fixture list for 2026 follows the pattern established over the past decade: a dense programme of all-weather Flat cards spread across twelve months, supplemented by a smaller batch of National Hunt meetings on the turf course and an increasing number of evening cards under floodlights.
Nationally, the BHA programmed 1,460 fixtures for 2025, marginally down from 1,468 in 2024. Southwell’s share of that total is disproportionately large for a venue of its class — a reflection of the year-round availability that an all-weather track provides and the commercial demand for racing content from bookmakers and broadcasters.
What follows is a breakdown of how those fixtures are distributed across codes, sessions and seasons, and what the ongoing BHA fixture-list reforms mean for the Southwell schedule going forward.
AW Flat Fixtures: The Year-Round Backbone
The majority of Southwell’s annual programme — roughly three-quarters of all fixtures — consists of Flat racing on the Tapeta all-weather surface. These meetings run throughout the calendar year, including through the winter months when most turf courses are either waterlogged or frozen. It is this all-season availability that makes Southwell so valuable to the sport’s commercial ecosystem: bookmakers need product to offer, broadcasters need content to fill schedules, and the Tapeta delivers both when turf cannot.
Most AW Flat fixtures at Southwell are classified at Class 5, 6 or 7 — the lower tiers of the racing ladder. Fields typically contain runners from yards across the Midlands and the North, competing for purses that range from a few thousand pounds at the bottom end to mid-five-figure sums for the occasional Class 4 or higher race. The racing is competitive precisely because the prize money is modest: trainers send horses they expect to run well, rather than using the meeting as an afterthought.
Afternoon cards are the most common format for AW Flat meetings. A typical card features six or seven races, starting between 12:30 and 1:00pm and concluding by 4:00 or 4:30pm. Weekend fixtures, particularly Saturdays, sometimes carry slightly higher-class races or attract larger fields as trainers take advantage of the day’s broader audience. Midweek cards on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays form the backbone of the routine programme.
There are no Pattern races at Southwell — no Group 1, 2 or 3 events. The highest-profile AW Flat races are those carrying points for the All-Weather Championships, which can attract better-quality horses aiming to qualify for the lucrative Finals Day. These races are scattered across the winter months and are worth marking in the calendar if you follow the AW Championships pathway.
National Hunt Dates: When Jumps Season Arrives
Southwell’s National Hunt programme is much smaller than its Flat calendar but occupies a distinct and valued niche. The jumps meetings take place on the turf course that sits inside the all-weather oval, and they are concentrated in the spring and autumn — broadly from March through to early June and then again from October through December. January and February are typically blank for jumps at Southwell, with the turf course resting during the coldest and wettest part of the year.
NH fixtures at Southwell are usually classified at Class 4 or 5, featuring novice hurdles, handicap chases and the occasional open National Hunt Flat race for young horses. The turf course is tight and left-handed, with portable fences that are considered stiff by industry standards. Ground conditions vary more than on the all-weather and can swing from good to heavy within the same week depending on rainfall. When the ground gets soft, the emphasis shifts sharply towards stamina and jumping accuracy — front-runners that cannot clear the fences cleanly will come unstuck.
The number of NH fixtures at Southwell has been declining nationally as the BHA has reduced Jump race volume across the fixture list. In 2024, three hundred Jump races were cut from the national programme as part of the competitiveness trial. Southwell was not immune to those cuts, losing several lower-grade fixtures. The trend is likely to continue in 2026, though the exact allocation depends on annual negotiations between the BHA, the Racecourse Association and the Levy Board.
For racegoers, the NH meetings offer a different atmosphere from the bread-and-butter AW cards. Fields are often smaller, the racing is more attritional, and the connection between ground conditions and results is far more direct than on Tapeta. Checking the going report on the morning of a Southwell jumps meeting is essential — a shift from good-to-soft to soft can transform the complexion of every race on the card.
Evening and Floodlit Meetings
Southwell became the first racecourse in Europe to be lit entirely by LED technology when its floodlight system went live in 2019. The installation transformed the track’s fixture capacity, allowing evening meetings on the all-weather to run through the darker months without relying on daylight. Evening cards now make up a meaningful slice of the annual programme, typically starting around 4:30 or 5:00pm and running until 8:00 or 8:30pm.
The evening slot is popular with broadcasters and bookmakers because it fills a gap between the afternoon’s turf racing and close-of-play. Sky Sports Racing, which broadcasts all Southwell meetings, treats the evening cards as a natural extension of the day’s racing content. For punters, the evening meetings can offer slightly thinner betting markets than the afternoon cards — fewer casual bets, lower liquidity — but also, occasionally, overlooked value in underbet races.
Evening fixtures at Southwell are exclusively AW Flat. The turf jumps course does not operate under lights. The class profile of evening meetings tends to mirror the afternoon cards: mostly Class 5 and 6 handicaps, with the occasional restricted novice stakes or classified race. Field sizes are generally healthy, as the all-weather programme reliably attracts enough declarations to avoid the small-field problems that plague some turf fixtures.
How BHA Changes Affect Southwell’s Calendar
The BHA’s two-year fixture-list trial, launched in 2024, introduced the concept of 170 Premier Racedays across British racing — meetings with higher minimum prize money, more top-class races and a protected broadcast window on Saturday afternoons. Southwell, as a predominantly lower-class venue, does not host Premier Racedays. But the ripple effects of the restructuring touch every racecourse in the country, including this one.
The most direct impact has been on Jump racing. The removal of three hundred Jump races nationally in 2024 reduced the volume of NH fixtures available across the calendar, and Southwell’s allocation of jumps dates has been trimmed accordingly. The trade-off is that the remaining races should, in theory, attract larger fields and more competitive racing — a goal the BHA measures through quarterly reports on field sizes and the percentage of races with eight or more runners.
On the Flat, the fixture-list changes have been more favourable for Southwell. The BHA moved some Flat races out of the congested summer period and into the autumn and winter, precisely the time when the all-weather tracks are at their busiest. More AW races in the schedule means more opportunities at Southwell, and the track’s field-size data for the Tapeta era has been broadly positive — reflecting the national trend in which all-weather meetings consistently outperform turf on competitiveness metrics during the colder months.
Looking ahead, the BHA has signalled that the fixture list will continue to evolve annually based on data from the trial period. For Southwell, the likeliest trajectory is a steady or slightly growing AW Flat programme, a reduced but more focused NH calendar, and continued reliance on evening cards to maximise the value of the LED floodlight investment. The full 2026 fixture list is published by the BHA and updated as amendments are made throughout the year.