Willie Mullins at the Cheltenham Festival: 121 Winners, 11 Titles and the 2026 Haul

The record in numbers

Trainer page with current runners and prices: /trainers/willie-mullins.

A note on the titles figure. Sporting Life reported the 2026 title as Mullins' eleventh. One aggregator lists thirteen. We have not reconciled the two and publish eleven, from the more authoritative source, with the discrepancy flagged. This is why the page carries an in progress fact-check status.

How far ahead he is

Festival winners by trainer, after the 2026 meeting:

The gap to second place, 43 winners, is bigger than the entire career total of every trainer on the list bar Henderson and Nicholls.

The 2026 Festival: eight winners

Mullins was leading trainer for the eighth consecutive year. Seven of the eight winners are in our verified results; the eighth race is not yet verified line by line and is deliberately left blank rather than filled from memory.

Counted from that table: three of the four championship races, three Grade 1 novice races, and the juvenile championship. Four of the seven were ridden by Paul Townend — every one of his 2026 winners. The SPs range from 7/5 to 50/1; three of the seven were 11/1 or bigger, which is a useful corrective to the idea that Mullins winners are always short prices.

His eight winners were more than half of Ireland's 15 in the Prestbury Cup, which Ireland won 15–13.

Championship-race wins, 2017–2026

Drawn from the verified last-ten-winners tables in our four race guides. Forty championship races were run in the window; Mullins won twelve.

Things the table shows without interpretation:

• Eleven of the twelve were ridden by Paul Townend; the exception is Nichols Canyon under Ruby Walsh in 2017.
• The five Gold Cups came from three horses, two of them dual winners.
• The 2017–2018 Stayers' Hurdle wins came before the Gold Cup run began; since 2019 the wins have been concentrated in the Gold Cup and the two-mile championships.
• Both Stayers' Hurdle winners were double-figure prices; the Gold Cup and Champion Hurdle winners were mostly favourites.

What it does not show: strike rates. We do not hold the number of Mullins runners in each race, so we publish no percentage.

The 2027 picture

Third-party reports (no named bookmaker verified) have quoted Mullins horses at the head of two 2027 markets: Gaelic Warrior at about 2/1 for the Gold Cup, with Final Demand (about 16/1), Fact To File (about 18/1) and Kitzbuhel (about 20/1) also listed, and Lossiemouth at about 5/2 for the Champion Hurdle, with King Rasko Grey named in preview coverage. The 2026 Arkle winner Kargese and runner-up Kopek Des Bordes are on our Champion Chase page; Ballyburn, second in the 2026 Stayers' Hurdle, is on the Stayers' page.

Prices on those pages are DEMO until a licensed feed is connected. For the risks of backing any of them now, read the ante-post guide.

What we have not verified

• The leading-trainer title count (11 v 13).
• The eighth 2026 winner.
• Runner numbers, and therefore strike rates, for any year.

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