Colonial Downs returns on Thursday with the most ambitious summer programme in the Virginia track’s history.
The New Kent racecourse will open its 2026 meet on June 25 at 12.30pm Eastern, beginning an 11-week run that now stretches across Thursday-to-Sunday racing and finishes on Labor Day, September 7. Colonial Downs said the season will feature 45 days of live Thoroughbred racing, nearly 400 individual races, more than 3,000 horses and about $30 million in purses.
It is a sizeable statement from a track that has become increasingly important to the American summer calendar, particularly on turf. For followers of the wider Mid-Atlantic scene, it also sits neatly alongside the recent momentum seen in races such as Witty’s Ben’s Cat Stakes win and Isivunguvungu’s Laurel Park comeback.
Turf Takes Centre Stage At Colonial
Opening week will lean heavily into Colonial’s strongest asset: the Secretariat Turf Course. Thoroughbred Daily News reported that 22 turf races are scheduled across the first weekend, with Saturday’s card due to include two Virginia-restricted turf stakes.
The Brookmeade Stakes for older fillies and mares and the Edward P. Evans Stakes for males aged three and upward are both set for a mile and a sixteenth on grass. That gives the meeting an immediate local-stakes identity before the programme builds toward its bigger graded-race peaks later in the summer.
The track has also listed an all-steeplechase card for Monday, June 29, featuring the Grade 2 Theodora A. Randolph Stakes over two and a quarter miles. That race is positioned as the first leg of the National Steeplechase Association’s Triple Tiara, all staged at Colonial.
Major Targets Ahead In Virginia
The headline fixtures are still to come. Colonial’s own release points to the Grade 1 Arlington Million, the Grade 2 Beverly D., the Grade 2 Secretariat Stakes and the Grade 3 Old Dominion Derby as the marquee races of the meet.
The Arlington Million remains the name with the most international pull, while the Old Dominion Derby on closing day gives the Virginia season a strong late-summer anchor. For three-year-old form followers, that closing card also lands deep enough into the campaign to carry interest beyond the early-season Triple Crown trail, a thread ReadHorseRacing readers have already followed through the Preakness Stakes runners guide.
Colonial’s jockey colony is also expected to have depth. Paco Lopez, last year’s leading rider at the track, is among the returning names, with Mychel Sanchez, Jorge Ruiz, Sheldon Russell, Jevian Toledo and Daniel Centeno also noted in the opening-week picture.
A Bigger Summer Meet
The most telling change is the rhythm of the season. The addition of regular Sunday racing gives Colonial a broader weekly footprint, while the track is also leaning into family days, lower admission and a bigger entertainment schedule around the racing.
That matters because the racing product itself is already attractive: turf volume, strong purses, a familiar Mid-Atlantic horsemen base and several dates with genuine graded-stakes consequence. If the opening weekend fills as planned, Colonial should quickly feel less like a seasonal restart and more like one of the central venues of the American summer.
