Horse Racing Prize Money: Fame Doesn't Pay

The Grand National is the most famous horse race in the world. Its entire prize fund is £1 million — the same as one race at Royal Ascot.

It is also less than a single darts player earns for winning a world title: the 2026 champion took £1 million on his own, from a £5 million fund — see our guide to darts prize money.

And it is now half the Epsom Derby, which was raised to £2 million with £1 million to the winner and prize money paid down to tenth place — set out in our guide to Epsom Derby prize money.

That is the central fact about prize money in racing: it follows commercial value, not fame. Figures below are the most recent confirmed for each race and are labelled by year.

What the big races pay

Race	Year	Total fund	To the winner
Royal Ascot, whole meeting	2026	£10.65m (35 races)	—
Lexus Melbourne Cup	2026	A$10m	~A$4.4–4.5m
Prince of Wales’s Stakes	2026	£1m	—
Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes	2026	£1m	—
Randox Grand National	2026	£1m	£500,000
Cheltenham Gold Cup	2025	£646,880	£363,999

Second place in the Grand National takes £200,000 and third £100,000.

The Grand National pays less than one Ascot race

Set the two side by side and the gap is stark. The National’s £1 million covers the whole race. Royal Ascot’s Prince of Wales’s Stakes carries £1 million on its own, and so does the Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes — two single races on a five-day card worth £10.65 million in total across 35 races.

The Cheltenham Gold Cup, the most prestigious race of the jumps season, is smaller again: £646,880 in 2025 with £363,999 to the winner. That is roughly a third of a single elite Flat race.

The reason is not that jumps racing is less popular. It is that Flat racing’s elite contests carry breeding value. A Group 1 win on the Flat adds enormously to a horse’s worth as a stallion or broodmare, which draws international owners and sponsorship at levels jumps racing cannot match. Most National runners are geldings, with no stud career at all.

The National’s fame converts into tickets, hospitality and broadcast rights rather than prize money. Our guide to racing tickets covers what those cost.

The Ascot figures people mix up

Two different records were reported for Ascot in 2026 and they are constantly conflated:

• £10.65 million — the Royal Ascot meeting alone, 35 races across five days, 16–20 June 2026.
• £19.4 million — Ascot racecourse across the whole of 2026, every fixture at the course, including Champions Day and the winter jumps programme.

Both are records. They measure different things. If you see “Ascot prize money hits £19.4m” alongside a Royal Ascot article, that is the annual figure, not the meeting.

The Melbourne Cup is the outlier

The Victoria Racing Club raised the Lexus Melbourne Cup to A$10 million, with roughly A$4.4–4.5 million to the winner.

For a single staying handicap, that is extraordinary — around ten times the Grand National’s entire fund for a race of broadly comparable type and profile. It is the clearest evidence that a race’s prize money reflects the commercial decisions of its organisers and jurisdiction rather than any objective measure of prestige. The Cup is run at Flemington, one of the largest racing venues in the world, as covered in our ranking of the biggest horse racing venues.

Nobody wins the whole purse

A point routinely lost in headlines: prize money goes to the connections, not the jockey.

The owner receives the largest share. Agreed percentages then go to the trainer, the jockey and stable staff. A jockey’s cut of a winning purse is a small fraction of the headline number, which is why riding fees, retainers and volume of rides matter more to most jockeys’ income than any single big-race win.

So “the Grand National winner gets £500,000” describes a payment to an ownership group, not a cheque to the rider who crossed the line first.

How racing compares with other sports

Competition	Total prize fund
Champions League 2026/27, to clubs	€2.437bn
US Open tennis 2025	$90m
The Masters 2026	$22.5m
Royal Ascot 2026, whole meeting	£10.65m
Grand National 2026	£1m

Racing’s biggest meeting pays roughly half a golf major. Its most famous single race pays less than a first-round loser’s cheque at a Grand Slam multiplied out across a draw. For how those purses are built, see our guides to Masters prize money and Champions League prize money, or the full set in our prize money hub.

How we checked these numbers

Royal Ascot’s £10.65 million meeting fund, the two £1 million races and the separate £19.4 million annual figure are from Ascot’s own media release and Sportsnaut’s race-by-race breakdown. The Melbourne Cup increase to A$10 million is from the Victoria Racing Club. Grand National figures are from GrandNational.org.uk and the 2026 race record. The Gold Cup purse is the confirmed 2025 figure.

Each row in the table carries its year, because racing prize funds are reset annually and several of these rose in 2026. The Gold Cup is given as 2025 because we could not confirm a 2026 figure to the same standard, and we would rather label the year than imply currency it does not have. The distribution of prize money among connections is described in general terms because the exact percentages vary by jurisdiction and contract.

Review class: seasonal. Racing prize funds are announced annually — recheck each spring for the jumps festivals and each summer for Royal Ascot and the Melbourne Cup.