Festivals

Each year Cheltenham offers a Festival calendar throughout venues across town. These Festivals programmes are extremely attractive to visitors and locals, so it’s worth booking early. For the four festivals Jazz, Science, Music and Literature, Cheltenham Festival Membership offers advance booking, exclusive events and ticket discounts.

The 2018 Cheltenham Literature Festival

The literature festival always brings many readers of all ages.

Held in October, names will be announced in July 2018. The 2017 Literature Festival was the most successful in its 68 year history, breaking box office records with many international visitors. There is street food, family areas and a wide choice of late night events.

The 2018 Cheltenham Science Festival

The theme for the 2018 festival is Connected Divided, which will be explored by Guest Curators including broadcasters and cyber security experts. There will be more than 80 free activities in the interactive zones where visitors of all ages will be invited to create, invent, play and explore. There’s a new Cyber Zone and the return of the Maker Shack. The festival includes a schools programme and the live-streamed final of the world’s leading science communication competition FameLab International will be watched by several thousands.

Cheltenham Music Festival

The classical music festival in Cheltenham is held every year during the summer.

Cheltenham is closely connected to some big names in British classical music, including Holst, Elgar, Hubert Parry and Ralph Vaughan Williams. The Cheltenham Music festival in July celebrates a range of music from big names to emerging talent. From morning to evening Prom concerts as well as late-night after-concert chats at the Festival bar will take place daily. Family entertainment for all ages with puppetry concerts, toddler concerts and award-winning children’s books brought to life with music.

Cheltenham Jazz Festival

Six days of world-class entertainment across Cheltenham over the May Day bank holiday at both indoor and outdoor venues will see tourism numbers reach new heights as visitors attend from across the globe. The Festival offers both international names and rising talents including in the 2018 line-up Van Morrison, Courtney Pine featuring Omar and Imelda May, Rick Astley and more.

Horse racing

Cheltenham is world known for its Horse racing festival.

Known as the home of jumps racing, Cheltenham Racecourse’s headline event is the Cheltenham Festival and Gold Cup, which takes place over four days in March with horses and visitors travelling from across the globe to this elite event, sometimes called the Olympics of racing. The first day is Champion Day, followed by Ladies Day when women aim to be the most attractive at the venue, then St Patricks and the final day is the Cheltenham Gold Cup.

At many of the fixtures you Cheltenham racecourse has a dedicated Family Fun Zone with free activities and special guest character appearances, as well as a Shopping Village and evening entertainment.

The Jump Season Calendar runs from the end of October with a two-day event through to the Hunter Chase Evening finale at the beginning of May and within that time you will see some of the most famous jockeys and trainers of our time. The November Meeting has three days packed full of top-class racing action and is followed by the International Meeting in December. There’s a New Year’s Day meet and later in the month the Festival Trials Day begins the countdown to the Festival itself. There’s a two-day mid-week fixture in April before the season finale, the Hunter Chase Evening, at the beginning of May.