Galway Races 2026: Two Winners, and a Shift in Irish Race Style

The 157th Galway Races Summer Festival ran from Monday 27 July to Sunday 2 August at Ballybrit — seven days, fifty-four races, and as ever the racing sharing top billing with what people wore to watch it. Two of those days carry a competition: Thursday's Ladies Day, and Friday's Most Stylish. This year they produced two very different winners, and between them a fairly clear signal about where Irish race-day dressing is heading.

The festival

Ballybrit drew 124,745 people across the week — just over a thousand down on 2025's 125,997, and still short of pre-pandemic form. Thursday, Ladies Day, brought 24,128. Friday brought 27,783, the biggest crowd of the week, exactly as it was last year. Opening day was quieter than 2025: 16,102 against 18,472.

The card itself grew a little. An extra steeplechase was added on Tuesday to make it an eight-race day, one of those small adjustments chief executive Michael Moloney tends to make without fuss. “We're always trying to improve things,” he said, “so we have an extra steeplechase added on Tuesday to make it an eight-race card.” The Galway Plate carried a prize fund of €270,000.

Ladies Day: Lisa Walsh

The €10,000 Best Dressed Lady title went to Lisa Walsh, a 37-year-old accountant from Dunboyne, Co. Meath. She wore a custom dress by the Australian label Only One Ashley: a gold ground worked in a fine black geometric print, high-collared, with short puff sleeves that gave it those striking shoulders and a row of burnt-orange covered buttons running the full length of the front into a full midi skirt. Over it went a wide black sinamay hat by the Meath milliner Fiona Rafter, the brim swept up into a sculptural curl. Sheer black gloves, a small black top-handle bag and orange pointed courts finished it. It was the second year of Irish skincare brand Ella & Jo's three-year run as Ladies Day sponsor.

There was a quiet change to how you got into the competition at all. Hundreds had registered in advance, as usual, but for the first time Ballybrit also accepted walk-ins on the day — a small piece of housekeeping that widens the field considerably, and one worth watching if you have ever talked yourself out of entering.

The judges

The panel was Mandy Maher as head judge, Charlene Flanagan, co-founder of Ella & Jo, and the broadcaster Laura Fox, a Galway native, as guest judge.

Maher has now judged at Galway for twenty-four years. She runs Catwalk Model Agency and has spent more than two decades in the industry, and she is refreshingly unromantic about the job. “I'm alive so far,” she said on the morning of the competition. “I don't know if I'll be saying the same thing at half-three today, when I'm announcing the winner.” On the pressure: “I'm under no illusions to think any different. It's huge pressure.” And on the field: “Women can be competitive. Some are here for the craic but others are here to compete and win.”

The standard was exceptional once again, with entrants showcasing incredible style, confidence and individuality.

Maher called the decision “no easy task” and said the panel had been “blown away by the quality and creativity on display this year”. Fox described the style as “phenomenal”, adding that “it was fantastic to see so many people embracing fashion in their own way”. Flanagan put it more plainly: “Ladies Day is about so much more than fashion; it's about confidence, personality and expressing your own sense of style.”

Maher also flagged the trend she saw walking the enclosures — colour and polka dots, in deliberate contrast to the wall of white that had dominated Royal Ascot earlier in the summer. She judged in a one-off autumnal dress by the late Paul Costelloe, with a headpiece by the Roscommon milliner Laura Hanlon.

Best Hat

The €3,000 Best Hat prize went to Maksuda Akhter from Malahide, in a gold netted headpiece — also by Fiona Rafter. Two titles, one milliner, in a single afternoon.

Friday's Most Stylish: Sandra Faller

Friday's competition, sponsored by Athlone Towncentre for more than a decade now, is the looser, later, more experimental of the two. Judging began at 4pm and the title went to Sandra Faller — a Galway woman, winning at home.

She wore a black short puff dress by the Portuguese label Marques' Almeida, a headpiece by Edel Ramberg, shoes by Charles & Keith and a bag by August Night — and, underneath, a pair of orange shorts. That last detail is what did it.

Sandra's look was just perfect for a Friday evening racing. It was elegant yet edgy and had the most gorgeous pop of colour with the playful addition of the orange shorts.

That was head judge Marietta Doran, the stylist and racing style presenter who has fronted this competition for years. Her guest judge was the content creator Sarah Battle, who had said beforehand that she was “really looking for someone who embraces their own personal style and who owns it”. On the day: “The style was absolutely amazing this year, but when we spotted Sandra, we were both instantly drawn to her effortlessly stylish look.”

Faller's reaction was the least composed thing about her: “This is the best feeling in the world. To win in my home county meant so much to me. I'm completely shocked.” She took a €3,000 Athlone Towncentre gift card and a two-night break at the Sheraton Athlone with dinner and spa treatments.

Last year, and what changed

Set the 2026 winners beside the 2025 pair and the shift is hard to miss.

Last year's Ladies Day went to Megan Cunniss, a 28-year-old medical secretary at University Hospital Galway, in a sleeveless white 1950s-style dress with black trim and black buttons that she had designed herself — made in France, tailored in Galway. Her wide-brimmed hat was by Millinery By Mairéad in Newry, restyled at the last minute with a black bow she made out of a bedsheet. The clutch was hired from Mála Hire; the black-and-white stilettos were from Zara. “I just can't believe it, I am ecstatic,” she said. “I'm from Galway so this means so much to me.” Judge Lisa McGowan — herself the 2016 Galway winner — said the panel had been looking for “that rare magic”: “She didn't just wear the look, she owned it.”

Friday 2025 followed the same logic. Clodagh Cosgrove, 36, from Athlone, won in a purple and orange dipped-hem midi by Mannit that she had bought in Spain and already worn to a wedding, with a tilted purple hat from Depop that arrived the morning of the race, a Depop bag, and shoes and jewellery from Zara. “I am truly surprised,” she said. “I came to enjoy racing this evening with my friend, Aoife.”

So: 2025 was won twice over by resourcefulness. A homemade dress and a bedsheet bow on Thursday; a re-worn holiday buy and a second-hand hat on Friday. Both winners assembled their looks rather than bought them, and both were rewarded for it.

2026 went the other way. Thursday's winner wore a garment made to her measurements on the other side of the world, finished with a hat from a milliner working twenty minutes from her front door. Friday's wore a European designer label and won on a styling decision — the shorts — rather than on thrift. The prize money did not change. What changed is what the panels rewarded: last year, ingenuity; this year, precision.

Two other things are worth noting. The Ladies Day judging panel is not a fixture — Maher stays, but Ella & Jo's seat passed from co-founder Niamh Ryan to co-founder Charlene Flanagan, and the guest seat from Lisa McGowan to Laura Fox. And the colour story reversed completely: Cunniss won in monochrome, then twelve months later Maher was describing an enclosure full of colour and polka dots.

The verdict

Galway remains the most democratic of the big Irish race meetings — the one where a Depop hat can beat a boutique and a first-time entrant can walk in off the concourse and leave with ten thousand euro. That has not changed. But the two 2026 winners suggest the judges are currently in a more exacting mood, rewarding fit, finish and a single well-chosen risk over a clever save.

If you are planning for 2027, the read is straightforward: colour is back, millinery still decides it, and the detail people remember is the one nobody else thought of.

Millinery photograph courtesy of Fiona Rafter. Other photographs by Tanya Barrow, julie bishop and Mathias Reding on Unsplash. Photographs of the winners themselves are held by the festival and the agencies that covered it — Ladies Day images are credited to Ti Viktoria Capture via Galway Races, and Friday's Most Stylish to INPHO/Morgan Treacy. See the official Galway Races announcement and the Westmeath Independent report.