Our How-to Guide for Using Free Bets at the Cheltenham Festival

The 2026 Cheltenham Festival is just around the corner, and this is the time of year when the bookies offer up their most attractive sign-up offers, promotions and bonuses.

Whether you’re a casual punter who only bets on the big Festivals or a regular player, it is always worth exploring the free bet offers available, especially because there are so many betting sites licensed in the UK now.

The 2026 Cheltenham Festival runs from Tuesday 10th March to Friday 13th March this year, and we have already seen some bookmakers, including bet365 and William Hill, open up their non-runner no bet offer, meaning if your horse doesn’t run, you get your stake refunded. This will be music to the ears of ante-post punters with so many unknowns surrounding the race destination for the likes of Lossiemouth, Fact to File, Gaelic Warrior and Constitution Hill.

Finding Cheltenham Free Bets

When it comes to locating the best offers, we’d recommend using a comparison site like thatsagoal.com, where they have already published the best Cheltenham free bet offers. This long list of offers will have something for everyone – there are currently 42 welcome bonuses on their page, including bet £10 get £50 in free bets, bet £10 get £40 in free bets and bet £5 get £30 in free bets.

To get any of these offers, you need to be a new customer and follow the registration process. We’d recommend doing this a day or two before the Festival starts, so everything is set up and ready for betting on day 1.

How to use Cheltenham Free Bets Effectively

Once you have opened an account at a new bookie and placed your qualifying bet, the free bets will be added to your account. It is the norm that the qualifying bet needs to settle before you get the free bets credited, so bear this in mind and plan accordingly.

• For example, open a Ladbrokes account and place a £5 bet on the Supreme Novices Hurdle – the first race of the Cheltenham Festival.
• Once the race is over, you will get six free bets added to your account, which you can use on the upcoming races.

Some free bets might take a few hours to arrive; in these instances, it is a good idea to open a new betting account in advance of the day you want to use the free bet.

• For example, you want to use the BOYLE Sports £40 free bet offer on Friday’s Gold Cup.
• We’d recommend opening the account on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday and placing your £10 qualifying bet. That gives BOYLE Sports plenty of time to add the £40 free bet to your account.

Different bookies will have different rules when it comes to using the free bets, but all the major players make it easy to use the free bet, and withdraw any winnings.

Collecting Free Bets for the Cheltenham Festival

If you haven’t had many betting accounts in the past, the Cheltenham Festival is a good time to open a few accounts and collect some free bets. There are currently four “bet £10 get £40 in free bets” offers live, which theoretically means you could open an account with each of these, spend £40 of your own money on the qualifying bets, and collect £160 in free bets to use across Cheltenham week.

When you add to this the eight “bet £10 get £30 in free bets” offers available, you can see how easy it would be to build up a nice bank of free bets to use.

Horses to bet on at the Cheltenham Festival

Now you have got your Cheltenham free bets loaded into your accounts, which horses should you be betting on?

There are some short-priced favourites across the four days, and one in the very first race of the week. Punters will be looking to get off to a flying start with Old Park Star in the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle on Tuesday, before Lulamba and Kopek Des Bordes do battle in the Arkle.

On Wednesday, Majborough will be the biggest carrier of punters’ money in the Queen Mother Champion Chase. This would be a good option to use one of the bigger value Cheltenham free bets on.

Thursday could see Lossiemouth try to win the Mares Hurdle again (she could run in the Champion Hurdle on Tuesday), and we are treated to both the Ryanair Chase and the Stayers Hurdle. Jonbon will be a popular choice for punters in the Ryanair, and Bob Olinger will be trying to defend his crown in the Stayers race.

On Friday, all roads lead to the Cheltenham Gold Cup, where it looks like we will have one of the most open renewals in years. The Jukebox Man, Jango Baie, Fact to File, Gaelic Warrior and Galopin Des Champs will all be popular bets amongst punters, but Fact to File and Gaelic Warrior are not confirmed runners. Fact to File needs to be supplemented. Friday’s opening race, the Triumph Hurdle, is the ideal place to use some free bets with the well-fancied Narciso Has expected to be carrying the hopes of countless racing fans. Using free bets on a race like this reduces your risk, because you are playing with the bookie’s money, not your own.

See all the latest Cheltenham free bet offers here.