Preakness Stakes

What the Preakness is

The Preakness Stakes is the second leg of the American Triple Crown, run over 1 3/16 miles on dirt for three-year-old Thoroughbreds. The official Preakness site places it annually on the third Saturday in May, which puts it two weeks after the Kentucky Derby and three weeks before the Belmont Stakes. Its permanent home is Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, Maryland.

Those two weeks are the defining feature. The Derby can gather as many as twenty three-year-olds at a mile and a quarter, and the Preakness asks some of that group to return almost immediately against horses that skipped the Derby and arrive fresh. Every Triple Crown bid has to survive that compression.

The race decides less than the attention suggests. It identifies the best 1 3/16-mile performance by a three-year-old on one afternoon in Baltimore. It does not settle the division, because the Belmont still follows and the summer and autumn races for three-year-olds are still to come.

The conditions that define the race

The Preakness is a Grade 1 restricted to three-year-olds, which means a horse gets exactly one chance at it. There is no returning champion and no cross-generational comparison; the field is drawn from a single foal crop, and the race is over for every runner in it the moment the year ends.

The trip is one-sixteenth of a mile shorter than the Derby, at 1 3/16 miles rather than 1 1/4. That is a small difference on paper and a real one in practice, because it is paired with a much smaller field. Preakness fields are typically well under the Derby's twenty-horse cap, which changes how the early pace is contested and removes most of the traffic problems that decide Derby placings.

• Surface: dirt.
• Distance: 1 3/16 miles, or nine and a half furlongs.
• Eligibility: three-year-olds, colts, geldings, and fillies.
• Grade: Grade 1.
• Home track: Pimlico Race Course, Baltimore, Maryland.
• Timing: the third Saturday in May, two weeks after the Kentucky Derby.

Why the two-week turnaround shapes the field

Modern American training schedules commonly leave more than two weeks between route races, so the Preakness creates an unusual recovery decision. Connections of a Derby runner must judge whether the horse recovered; connections of a fresh horse must judge whether rest offsets less recent classic-distance experience.

The result is a field assembled from three different starting points: Derby runners returning quickly, horses that skipped the Derby to point here, and occasional entrants stepping up from smaller stakes. Comparing them means comparing preparation as much as ability, and there is no single statistic that resolves it.

A Triple Crown bid changes the arithmetic for one horse only. When the Derby winner does not enter, the sweep ends before the Preakness is run, and the race becomes a straightforward championship test rather than a referendum. Either way the conditions are the same; only the narrative changes.

Preakness history

The official Preakness account records that the race made its debut on Tuesday, May 27, 1873 at Pimlico, which makes it the second-oldest of the three Triple Crown races and two years older than the Kentucky Derby. Only the Belmont Stakes, first run in 1867, is older.

The distance and location have not always been settled. The same official history notes that the race left Maryland for a stretch, running at Morris Park in New York in 1890 at 1 1/2 miles rather than the current 1 3/16, then at Gravesend at a mile and 70 yards, with the final New York running in 1908 contested at 1 1/16 miles. The modern conditions are a settled convention rather than an unbroken rule.

Two traditions carry most of the race's ceremony. The winning owner receives the Woodlawn Vase, created by Tiffany and Company in 1860 for the now-defunct Woodlawn Racing Association; the original is kept at the Baltimore Museum of Art and winners take home a sterling replica, an arrangement that dates to 1953. The winning horse is draped in the Black-Eyed Susans blanket, a tradition the official Preakness site dates to 1940.

How to read the race

This guide does not offer selections. What a reader can do is understand what the conditions reward. A smaller field over a slightly shorter trip usually means the early pace is contested by fewer horses, so a runner with tactical speed can take a good position without spending as much energy to get it. That is a tendency, not a rule, and a single fast pacesetter can overturn it.

Past charts are the useful record here, not past narratives. A chart shows the fractions, where each horse sat, the track condition, and the running lines, which is a description of how the race unfolded rather than a claim about what will happen next.

• Recovery: how many days since the horse's last start, and how hard was it?
• Distance: has the horse actually run well at nine furlongs or beyond?
• Pace: how many entrants want the lead, and who needs cover?
• Track: what is the posted dirt condition, and has the horse handled it before?
• Race day: confirm official entries and scratches before drawing any conclusion.

Current edition: the 2026 running at Laurel Park

This section covers facts specific to the 2026 edition and does not describe the race's permanent conditions. Preakness 151 was run on Saturday, May 16, 2026 at Laurel Park in Laurel, Maryland, at the standard 1 3/16 miles. It was the first Preakness at Laurel and the first running away from Pimlico since 1908. The official preview listed a field of 14, the largest since 2011.

The move is temporary and structural. The official Preakness FAQ states that Pimlico Race Course is undergoing a major redevelopment and is closed for construction, that Laurel Park is serving as the temporary home for Preakness 151, and that the Preakness Stakes will return to Pimlico in 2027. Laurel Park is a substitute venue for one running, not the race's new home.

Venue, date, field size, and purse are set annually, so confirm the current edition against the official Preakness site.

• Permanent home: Pimlico Race Course, Baltimore.
• 2026 venue: Laurel Park, temporary, during Pimlico's redevelopment.
• 2026 date: Saturday, May 16, 2026, the 151st running.
• 2026 distance: 1 3/16 miles, unchanged from the standard trip.
• Return: the Preakness returns to Pimlico in 2027, per the official Preakness FAQ.

Common questions