Top Horse Racing Trainers 2026/27: Leading UK & Irish Trainers by the Numbers

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By The Guv'nor · Last updated October 2026

Who are the top horse racing trainers right now? In Britain, Dan Skelton is the reigning champion jumps trainer (2025/26) and Aidan O'Brien won the British Flat titles in 2024 and 2025. In Ireland, Willie Mullins was crowned champion jumps trainer again in 2025/26, and Aidan O'Brien led the 2026 Irish Flat table on prize money on 4 October 2026.

That's the short answer. Below are the official tables, ten years of champions on both sides of the Irish Sea, and something the big sites don't have: every Irish run from 14 leading yards lined up against its Betfair SP (BSP), to see whose horses actually made money. Spoiler: a big strike rate and a profit are not the same thing.

Who is leading the 2026/27 trainers' championships?

First, how the titles work, because the seasons don't line up neatly. In Britain the BHA decides both championships on prize money. The jumps title runs from April to April and the Flat title runs on the calendar year, January to December. In Ireland the jumps season finishes on the last day of the Punchestown Festival in early May and the new one starts the next day. Irish Flat racing runs all year at Dundalk, with the turf season ending in November at Naas.

Here's where things stood when I pulled the numbers on 5 October 2026. Irish figures are HRI's to close of business on 4 October (HRI allows a week for prize money to be added).

The live tables for the leading trainers in the UK, the 2026 Flat title and the 2026/27 jumps title, are on the BHA's trainers page, which is the official source.

Ten years of champion trainers

If you want to know who the top trainers are over time rather than over one season, the roll of honour tells the story better than any opinion. Each row pairs a jumps season with the Flat year that finished during it.

Two columns that never change. Crazy right? HRI's roll of honour has Mullins as Irish champion jumps trainer every season from 2007/08 to 2025/26, and Aidan O'Brien as Irish champion Flat trainer every year from 1999 to 2025.

The leading Irish trainers

Ireland is where the numbers get properly lopsided, so this is the section I'd read first if you bet on Irish racing and want to know who the best Irish horse trainers are on the figures. All figures come from Horse Racing Ireland's official statistics, ranked by total prize money (win and place). Strike rate is wins divided by runs, worked out by me.

Irish jumps trainers: the 2025/26 final table

Look at Elliott's line. He had 324 more runners than Mullins and still finished 14 winners and over €1m behind. Mullins doesn't just have more good horses; he wins with a higher share of what he runs. To 4 October 2026, early in the 2026/27 season, it's the same story: Mullins on €1,053,870 from 62 winners and 283 runs (21.9%), with Henry de Bromhead second on €768,190 (44 from 255, 17.3%) and Elliott third.

Irish Flat trainers: the 2026 table so far

This is the most interesting table on the page if I am honest. Joseph O'Brien had trained 48 more Irish Flat winners than his dad in 2026 to 4 October, but Aidan was over €1m ahead because Ballydoyle's winners come in the races worth winning. For comparison, Aidan finished the 2025 Irish Flat season on €7,200,160 from 112 winners (474 runs, 23.6%), with Joseph second on €3,728,018. Paddy Twomey has far fewer runners and the best strike rate of the top six, which is worth remembering when one of his turns up in a maiden.

If you follow Irish racing day to day, my Irish horse racing tips page explains what members get from me and when.

Top National Hunt trainers in Britain

The 2025/26 British jumps season finally gave Dan Skelton the title after Willie Mullins had pipped him for the previous two. A four-timer at Aintree's Grand National meeting put the title out of his rivals' reach, and on 12 April 2026 the Racing Post reported him on £4,762,920, £2,094,034 clear of Mullins. By the jumps finale at Sandown on 25 April, the BBC reported he had become the first trainer to pass £5m in prize money in a British jumps season.

Behind him, the long-term picture is two trainers. Paul Nicholls won seven of the ten British titles before Mullins's run, and Nicky Henderson took three of the others. Mullins's two British titles (2023/24 and 2024/25) were won from an Irish base, with his British runners concentrated at the big spring meetings, Cheltenham and Aintree. That's why those meetings swing the British title more than anything else. I go through those meetings race by race in my Cheltenham Festival preview, and the season ahead in the jumps season preview.

So who are the top horse racing trainers in the UK over jumps? On last season's prize money in Britain, Skelton. Across Britain and Ireland combined, nobody has matched Mullins over the last few seasons.

Top Flat trainers

On the Flat the British title moved between three operations from 2016 to 2025: Aidan O'Brien (2016, 2017, 2024 and 2025), John Gosden (2018 to 2020, then jointly with his son Thady in 2023) and Charlie Appleby for Godolphin (2021 and 2022). Aidan's two most recent British titles were won from Ballydoyle in Ireland, on top of his Irish ones.

The thing to understand about the top Flat trainers is that the title is won on prize money, and prize money is concentrated in Group 1s and the Classics. A yard like Ballydoyle can lead the money list with fewer winners than a big handicap yard, exactly as the Irish table above shows. When you're looking for top Flat trainers in 2026 to follow, decide first whether you mean "wins the big races" or "wins often". They are not the same list. My Flat season preview covers the races that decide it.

Strike rate vs profit: who is worth following blind?

This is the bit I actually care about, being essentially a statistics/maths geek. I took every Irish run between 1 October 2025 and 30 September 2026 for 14 of the leading yards from HRI's trainer records, then matched each one to Betfair's own published SP (BSP) results files. 8,542 of the 8,545 runs matched. Each yard appears in the table for its main code only, so dual-purpose yards' runs in the other code aren't in these lines. Noel Meade is left out: his 131 jumps runs were the smallest jumps sample of the lot, and he isn't one of the leading Flat yards. Then I worked out what backing every runner to a £1 level stake (1pt) would have returned, before Betfair commission.

The last column is a stress test, and it's hindsight: what the profit or loss would have been if that yard's single biggest-priced winner had lost instead.

For context, backing all 33,593 Irish runners in the same files (2,905 races) at BSP would have lost 1.3p in the pound before commission. So here's what jumps out:

• The best strike rates lost money. Mullins's jumpers won 21.1% of the time and Aidan's Flat horses 19.4%, and blind backing still cost 80.4pts and 101.4pts. The median winning BSP was 2.43 for Mullins's jumpers and 2.73 for Aidan's Flat runners. Everyone knows they're good, and the price knows it too.
• Elliott's profit is one horse. Sept Etoiles won a handicap hurdle at Fairyhouse on 4 April 2026 at a BSP of 243.41. Take that result away and his +202.0pts becomes -41.4pts. That's not a system, that's a lottery ticket that came in.
• Ger Lyons is the only yard in the tables still in front after the stress test, by 2.8pts on 283 runs. That's one season and a small sample, so I'd call it interesting, not proven.
• One oddity outside the tables. Henry de Bromhead's 229 Irish Flat runs showed +127.6pts at BSP. Take away his three biggest-priced Flat winners (BSP 64.92, 48.0 and 40.0) and it's -25.3pts. Same lesson, smaller string.

So, who is worth following blind? On these numbers, nobody. One season is noisy, these are Irish runs only (Mullins's Cheltenham runners aren't in here), and Betfair commission would take a bit more off every line. But the pattern is the one I'd expect: the famous yards are the ones the market prices up hardest. Why that happens is covered in value betting.

How I use trainer stats

Look, I used to be a Quantitative Researcher at a Tier 1 investment bank, and these days I put the same skills to work on horse racing. The quant in me says a number on its own means nothing without the price next to it. A 22% strike rate at short prices loses. A 6% strike rate at big prices can come close to breaking even, like Rothwell's jumpers above, although his biggest winner did a lot of that work.

That's why I don't judge anything on win rate. Anyone can talk about high win rates when they tip odds-on horses all day. What I care about is profit month to month, and a lot of the time that comes from outsiders and each-way value, because even when they place we make more than an odds-on shot winning. A trainer's name is never the reason I back a horse. It's one bit of context on a horse I'm already looking at, alongside the form, the ground and the price. If I'm unsure about a bet, I skip it.

The other side of it is information the tables can't show you. I own racehorses, and when I get stable information, or see smart money moving in the market, that goes to members of the Winners Club. Every horse I tip, I'm betting on myself, to strict points stakes. If points are new to you, what 1pt means explains it, and my tips service explains how the newsletter works.

When you're checking a trainer for a horse on today's card, the stats that help most are the specific ones: the yard's record with horses wearing first-time blinkers or cheekpieces, on a particular going (see going explained), or off a mark (see handicaps explained). Then it goes into the same checklist as everything else in how to pick a winner, and if the trainer column on a racecard is new to you, start with how to read horse racing form.

Trainer FAQs

Who is the best horse trainer in the UK?

On the official measure, prize money, Dan Skelton was champion jumps trainer in 2025/26, and Aidan O'Brien was champion Flat trainer in Britain in 2024 and 2025, training from Ireland. Over the ten British jumps seasons from 2016/17 to 2025/26 Paul Nicholls won the most titles (four), and over the ten Flat years from 2016 to 2025 Aidan O'Brien and John Gosden won four each (one of Gosden's shared with his son Thady).

Who is the leading trainer in Ireland?

Willie Mullins over jumps: HRI lists him as champion every season from 2007/08 to 2025/26, and he led the 2026/27 table on 4 October 2026. On the Flat, Aidan O'Brien has been Irish champion every year from 1999 to 2025 and led the 2026 table on prize money on 4 October, although Joseph O'Brien had trained more winners.

How is the champion trainer decided?

On prize money. In Britain the BHA counts jumps prize money from April to April and Flat prize money from January to December. The title goes to the trainer whose horses earn the most, not the trainer with the most winners, which is why the leader on wins and the leader on money can be different people.

Is it profitable to follow a top trainer?

Not blindly, on my numbers. Of the 13 leading Irish yards in my tables, checked over 1 October 2025 to 30 September 2026 at BSP, only Ger Lyons's Flat runners were still in profit once their biggest-priced winner was counted as a loser, and only by 2.8pts on 283 runs, in one season.

More in this guide

• How to read horse racing form, line by line
• How to pick a winner: my form-study checklist
• First-time blinkers, cheekpieces and wind ops: the stats
• Horse racing going explained
• Horse racing handicaps explained