Betfred Grand National Opening Times

The 16:00 off, and why it matters

The Grand National used to go off at 17:15. It moved forward by 75 minutes to 16:00 in 2024, after a Jockey Club review, and 16:00 has been the slot ever since. For anyone planning a shop visit, that shift is the single most useful fact on this page.

At 17:15, a shop closing at 18:00 gave you barely three quarters of an hour after the race to collect. At 16:00 the same shop gives you two hours, and the 294 verified shops with four hours or more left after the off cover the whole evening comfortably. Every one of the 295 verified shops is open at 16:00 on a Saturday, because the earliest Saturday close anywhere in the estate is 18:00 and that is a single precinct unit.

So the risk on National day is not the race itself. It is the hour before it, when a shop that opens at 09:00 and one that opens at 08:00 are very different propositions for a queue that starts building mid-morning. The search above measures each nearby shop against the off and against however early you want to arrive.

The three days of the festival

Aintree runs from Thursday to Saturday. None of the three days is a bank holiday, and none of them changes a shop’s hours — but the racing starts much earlier on the Thursday and Friday than the National does on the Saturday.

That gives the two weekdays a different shape of problem. A first race around 13:45 on the Thursday is comfortably inside every shop’s trading day, so the only question there is the close. On National day the pressure is all in the build-up: ITV coverage runs through the afternoon and the queue with it.

Beating the queue

National day is the one afternoon of the year when a high-street betting shop can have a genuine queue out of the door. A large share of the money staked on the race comes from people who bet once a year, much of it in cash, much of it in the last hour, and each of those slips takes longer to write than a regular customer’s.

The practical answer is to go early rather than to go nearest. Use the I want to be in buttons in the results to set 15, 30, 60 or 90 minutes before the off, and each shop will tell you whether it is open by then and what time it actually unlocks. In most areas the shop that opens at 08:00 is a better bet at 15:00 than the one 200 metres closer that opens at 09:00, simply because it has cleared more of its morning trade.

Two things worth knowing. Ante-post betting on the National is open for weeks beforehand, so the whole queue problem disappears if you put the bet on during the week — the Thursday and Friday of the festival are quiet in the shops by comparison. And shops stop taking bets on the race at the off, not at closing time, so arriving at 15:58 is not the same as arriving in time.

After the race: settling and the rest of the evening

Winning slips can be settled as soon as the result is official, usually within a few minutes of the finish, and there is racing and football after the National on most years. That makes the closing time the second figure to check: 294 of the verified shops have four hours or more left after a 16:00 off, and 137 have six or more, meaning they run to 22:00.

If you cannot get back the same day, a winning slip does not expire at closing time — but this page cannot tell you a branch’s policy on that, so treat the shop’s own advice as final. The time after the off column in the area summary shows the range across your nearest shops, from the tightest to the most generous.

Earliest opening and latest closing shops

Open earliest on National day

Saturday is the earliest start of the week across the estate. These shops are open before almost everywhere else, which on National day is exactly what you want.

• 3-5 Shelton Square CV1 1DG opens 07:30 Sat · 8h 30m before the off Coventry, West Midlands
• 695a High Road IG3 8RH opens 07:30 Sat · 8h 30m before the off Ilford, Greater London
• 705A High Road IG3 8RH opens 07:30 Sat · 8h 30m before the off Ilford, Greater London
• 47/49 High Street, Wombwell S73 8HS opens 07:30 Sat · 8h 30m before the off Barnsley, South Yorkshire
• 16 Peel Square S70 1YA opens 08:00 Sat · 8 hours before the off Barnsley, South Yorkshire
• 141 High Street, Kings Heath B14 7DG opens 08:00 Sat · 8 hours before the off Birmingham, West Midlands
• 21 Railway Road BB1 5AX opens 08:00 Sat · 8 hours before the off Blackburn, Lancashire
• 72 Waterloo Road FY4 1AB opens 08:00 Sat · 8 hours before the off Blackpool, Lancashire

Open latest after the race

The 22:00 shops, which give you six hours after the off to get back and collect.

• 3-5 Shelton Square CV1 1DG to 22:00 · 6 hours after the off Coventry, West Midlands
• 695a High Road IG3 8RH to 22:00 · 6 hours after the off Ilford, Greater London
• 705A High Road IG3 8RH to 22:00 · 6 hours after the off Ilford, Greater London
• 16 Peel Square S70 1YA to 22:00 · 6 hours after the off Barnsley, South Yorkshire
• 141 High Street, Kings Heath B14 7DG to 22:00 · 6 hours after the off Birmingham, West Midlands
• 21 Railway Road BB1 5AX to 22:00 · 6 hours after the off Blackburn, Lancashire
• 72 Waterloo Road FY4 1AB to 22:00 · 6 hours after the off Blackpool, Lancashire
• 472-476 Halliwell Road BL1 8AN to 22:00 · 6 hours after the off Bolton, Greater Manchester

Scotland, Wales and the Scottish National

Unlike the bank holidays covered elsewhere on this site, the Grand National is not a legal date, so there is no national split to worry about: a shop in Glasgow, Cardiff or Bolton all trade their ordinary Saturday hours on 10 April 2027. The Scottish verified sample actually averages marginally longer Saturdays than the English one.

Scotland does get its own sequel. The Scottish Grand National is run at Ayr in the weeks after Aintree, and the Welsh Grand National comes at the other end of the season, at Chepstow over the Christmas programme. Neither changes shop hours either; both are Saturdays in the ordinary way.

Cheltenham first, Aintree second

The two big jumps festivals sit about three weeks apart. In 2027 the Cheltenham Festival runs from Tuesday 16 March to Friday 19 March, and Aintree follows from Thursday 8 April to Saturday 10 April. Cheltenham is four weekday afternoons; Aintree ends on a Saturday. That difference matters more for opening hours than anything about the racing: Cheltenham’s Gold Cup Friday falls inside ordinary weekday hours, while the National lands on the day of the week when shops open earliest and stay open longest.

As on every page here, we have no evidence that Betfred extends opening hours for either festival. Published hours are flat across the year, so assume the listed times and check a branch’s Google listing if you are planning to arrive early or late.

How confident each time is

The race details. The 2027 Grand National is scheduled for Saturday 10 April at 16:00, as the finale of the festival running from Thursday 8 April. Off-times are Aintree’s published schedule and can move on the day if earlier races overrun, so treat 16:00 as the plan rather than a guarantee.

The shop hours. Ordinary Thursday, Friday and Saturday patterns, taken from published branch times for the 295 shops flagged verified. Nothing on this page is a holiday estimate, because none of the three days is a holiday — which makes this one of the more reliable pages on the site.

Flagged as unverified. The 1,111 shops marked standard pattern, whose weekly hours we have not confirmed individually, and a further 20 with no hours at all. The standard pattern assumes a 08:30 to 22:00 Saturday, which would put the shop comfortably around the off — but if the real close is 18:00 or 20:00 your window after the race is much shorter than it looks.

The queue advice is judgement rather than data. We have no footfall figures for individual branches, only the well-documented fact that the National draws far more once-a-year cash betting than any other race.

Frequently asked questions

Every Betfred shop, A to Z, with its Saturday hours

All 1,426 shops by post town, showing the Saturday hours that apply on Grand National Day and how long each has after a 16:00 off. 1,406 link to their own page with the full week.