Belmont Park to host Breeders’ Cup in 2027 after $455M renovation. Keeneland gets 2026 event

By Canadian Press on May 28, 2025.

The Breeders’ Cup world championships are returning to New York in 2027 at the rebuilt Belmont Park, following a massive renovation project to revitalize one of the most important horse racing tracks in the country.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, along with officials from the Breeders’ Cup and the New York Racing Association, announced Wednesday that the track on the edge of Queens and Nassau County on Long Island will stage the event in the fall two years from now.

Keeneland in Lexington was revealed as the 2026 host.

Belmont Park was last home to the Breeders’ Cup in 2005, the fourth time in two decades after also being there in 1990, ’95 and 2001. A goal of the $455 million teardown and reconstruction was to attract the major event and eventually get back into the rotation that has involved a Kentucky or a California track every year since 2008.

Del Mar outside San Diego has the Breeders’ Cup later this year as a back-to-back host and for the fourth time since 2017. Santa Anita outside Los Angeles, Keeneland and Churchill Downs in Louisville — home of the Kentucky Derby — have become the regular sites for the two-day festival featuring the best thoroughbreds in the world and tens of millions of dollars’ worth of races.

The Belmont Stakes also is set to return to its old home in either 2026 or ’27, after a multiyear stint at historic Saratoga Race Course in upstate New York during renovations.

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AP horse racing: https://apnews.com/hub/horse-racing

Stephen Whyno, The Associated Press

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