Fair Grounds Race Course & Slots will open its 155th Thoroughbred racing season on November 19, running through March 21, 2027, with more than four months of live racing, special events and new programming planned across the Gentilly property. The track has also added more than 80 new slot machines to its casino floor and made improvements to its hospitality and event spaces ahead of the meet.
The 2026-27 schedule, announced by Fair Grounds and first reported by New Orleans CityBusiness, includes the Thanksgiving Classic on November 26 and Louisiana Champions Day on December 12. The season builds toward Louisiana Derby Day on March 20, 2027, when the track's marquee event will run for the 114th time.
Opening day landing near the holiday isn't new — Fair Grounds' Thoroughbred meet has traditionally coincided with Thanksgiving Day since 1892, when the Crescent City Jockey Club first formalized the winter racing calendar as a Crescent City tradition, according to Gambinos Bakery. The track itself traces back even further, having opened in 1838 as the Louisiana Race Course before its 1872 re-establishment under the Fair Grounds name, per TwinSpires, which notes that history makes it the third-oldest continuously operating Thoroughbred track in North America.
A $1 Million Prep Race With National Reach
The Louisiana Derby, a $1 million Grade 2 event, headlines Fair Grounds' premier racing day each spring. First run in 1894 as the Crescent City Derby, the race is now contested at 1 3/16 miles — the longest Kentucky Derby prep race in North America — and awards 100 qualifying points to its winner, according to TwinSpires' coverage of the Road to the Derby.
That prep-race pedigree paid off this year. Golden Tempo built his 2026 Triple Crown campaign at Fair Grounds, winning the Grade 3 Lecomte Stakes and placing third in both the Risen Star Stakes and the Louisiana Derby before going on to secure a place in the Kentucky Derby, which he won along with the Belmont Stakes under trainer Cherie DeVaux, per the same Wikipedia account, which notes DeVaux became the first female trainer to win the Kentucky Derby. Golden Tempo earned all of his Kentucky Derby qualifying points at the New Orleans track, underscoring the winter meet's role as a launching pad for national champions.
Slots, Off-Track Betting Fund the Purses
Beyond the racetrack itself, Fair Grounds operates a main casino floor with 600 slot machines and a regional network of 15 off-track betting parlors across southeast Louisiana offering video poker, sportsbooks and pari-mutuel wagering, according to Hospitality Online. Statewide, slot machines at Louisiana racetracks generated $28.1 million in adjusted gross revenue in August 2025, with Fair Grounds' own slot floor accounting for roughly $3 million of that total, per regulatory data cited by Gaming Intelligence. That gaming revenue helps offset the cost of live racing operations, a financial link that became especially visible last year.
In June 2025, parent company Churchill Downs Inc. reached an agreement with the Louisiana Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association to guarantee live racing at Fair Grounds, resolving a licensing crisis after the Louisiana Supreme Court invalidated state authorization for historical horse racing machines without local voter approval, as reported by BloodHorse. That ruling had threatened nearly half of the track's off-track betting revenue, making this year's expanded 80-plus slot machine addition a notable follow-up to a period when the meet's future itself was in question.
A Track Rebuilt Twice Over
The current 217,000-square-foot grandstand and clubhouse opened in 1997, four years after a fire destroyed the historic grandstand in December 1993; the rebuilt facility later survived extensive storm damage during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, according to the Daily Racing Form. Churchill Downs Incorporated has owned Fair Grounds and its associated Louisiana off-track betting network since October 2004, when it acquired the property for $47 million, per TwinSpires.
The 145-acre Gentilly property does more than host horses each winter — it has served as the permanent home of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival since 1972, according to Gambinos Bakery, cementing Fair Grounds' place as both a sporting institution and a cultural landmark for the city. With the 155th Thoroughbred season set to open in November, that dual identity carries into another year of live racing, new slot machines, and the pursuit of the next Kentucky Derby contender to come out of New Orleans.
