Betfred Bank Holiday Opening Times

Remaining bank holidays in 2026

Four dates are left in 2026. One of them, Christmas Day, closes every betting shop in Great Britain. St Andrew’s Day applies in Scotland only and does not close shops at all.

Every bank holiday in 2027

Thirteen dates, including a Christmas that falls at the weekend and therefore pushes two substitute holidays into the following week. Easter is early in 2027: Good Friday lands on 26 March.

Christmas Day: the one day everything shuts

This is the only bank holiday where the answer is the same for all 1,426 shops. Under the Gambling Act 2005 a betting premises licence does not permit the premises to be open to the public on Christmas Day, so every Betfred shop in England, Wales and Scotland is closed for the whole day. There is no late opening, no morning trade before a race meeting, and no exception for branches inside shopping centres or on holiday parks.

It catches people out in two ways. The first is Christmas Eve, when a shop that normally runs to 22:00 often closes early, in the late afternoon or early evening, and the last over-the-counter bet of the festive period goes on hours before people expect. The second is the day after: shops reopen on Boxing Day, which has one of the strongest racing cards of the year, so the queue you avoid on the 25th arrives on the 26th instead.

Online betting is untouched by the rule, because it restricts premises rather than betting itself. The Betfred website and app take bets through Christmas Day as normal, but anything that needs the counter — cash stakes, paper slips, machine play, cashing a winning slip — waits until the 26th.

Boxing Day, the substitutes and New Year

Boxing Day is not a quiet day in a betting shop. The King George VI Chase at Kempton, along with cards at Wetherby, Wincanton and Down Royal, makes 26 December one of the busiest afternoons of the year, and shops open accordingly. What changes is the shape of the day rather than whether the doors open: in 2026 Boxing Day falls on a Saturday, so most shops keep Saturday hours, while in 2027 it falls on a Sunday and Sunday hours apply.

When Christmas Day or Boxing Day lands at the weekend, the bank holiday moves. In 2026 Boxing Day is a Saturday, so Monday 28 December is the substitute. In 2027 both fall at the weekend, so Monday 27 and Tuesday 28 December are the substitutes. Those substitute days are the ones where Sunday-style hours are most likely, because trading is quieter than the racing days either side of them.

New Year’s Day is the classic late start. Shops open, and there is racing at Cheltenham and Musselburgh to open the year, but a branch that normally lifts its shutters at 08:30 may not do so until 10:00 or later. If you are planning a New Year’s Day bet, treat the Sunday pattern shown in the search results as the likely shape of the day.

Why Scotland is different

Scotland does not have more bank holidays than England and Wales; it has different ones. The Scottish calendar adds 2 January and St Andrew’s Day on 30 November, takes the summer holiday on the first Monday in August rather than the last, and does not treat Easter Monday as a bank holiday at all. That matters here because roughly one Betfred shop in eight is in Scotland, and a page that applied the English calendar to Glasgow or Dundee would be wrong four times a year.

Two Scottish dates deserve a word of warning. St Andrew’s Day is a bank holiday in name but not a shop-closing one: banks and some council offices shut, and betting shops trade normally, so a Scottish shop on 30 November keeps ordinary hours. The 2 January holiday is the opposite — genuinely quiet, and the day when Scottish shops are most likely to open late or close early. In 2027 it moves to Monday 4 January because 2 January is a Saturday.

The search on this page reads the country each shop sits in and applies the right calendar to it. Pick Easter Monday and a Glasgow shop will tell you it is an ordinary Monday there; pick the Scottish summer holiday and an English shop will say the same.

How these times are worked out

Three different kinds of statement appear on this page, and it is worth being clear about which is which.

Certain. Christmas Day closure. That is the law rather than a policy, so it applies to every shop without exception, and the results panel says Closed all day with no hedging.

The shop’s own hours. Every shop here has a standard weekly pattern compiled from public sources. On a bank holiday that behaves like an ordinary day — Good Friday, Boxing Day, St Andrew’s Day in Scotland — that pattern is what you should expect, so the results show the shop’s real hours for that day of the week.

An expectation. On Monday bank holidays and the festive substitute days, most shops in the estate trade reduced, Sunday-style hours, and a minority keep a full Monday. The results show the shop’s Sunday pattern as the likely case and its normal weekday hours alongside, labelled, so you can see both. None of this is a Betfred announcement, and a single branch can always differ, so if the journey matters, ring the shop. Every shop page linked from the results carries its phone-free details, the full seven-day week and its own bank holiday tables.

Frequently asked questions

Every Betfred shop, A to Z

All 1,426 shops by post town, 1,405 of them linking to their own page with the full week, the bank holiday tables and a live open or closed panel. The search box at the top of this page is the quicker route if you know the postcode.

Shops shown without a link are ones we have not yet written a page for. They still appear in the search results above with their bank holiday expectation.

Related pages

• Betfred opening times today — live open or closed status for all 1,426 shops, with closing countdowns.
• Betfred shop directory — browse by town and postcode district.