Belmont Park roars back after three-year rebuild
Horses raced at Belmont Park on Friday for the first time in more than three years.
The card on 18 September 2026 opened the fall season at the rebuilt New York track, which has stood in some form since 1905 on the Queens-Nassau County line. The old giant is gone. In its place is a tighter, greener racecourse built for modern crowds.
The new five-storey grandstand covers about 300,000 sq ft, less than a quarter of the roughly 1.25m sq ft footprint that came before, according to The Guardian. The paddock — the yard where horses are saddled and paraded before a race — is 50% larger. Around 20 acres of green space are now open to the public, and the infield, the grass centre of the track, has been opened for fans for the first time.
There are four rebuilt racing surfaces. The famous mile-and-a-half dirt track has been recreated with the same soil mix used at Saratoga, with the finish line moved to allow a longer stretch run for home. NYRA, the nonprofit operator, says the work also renovated the main dirt track and two turf courses and added a new all-weather synthetic surface, a man-made track designed to ride safely in wet and cold weather.
The rebuild was paid for by a $455m state loan plus $100m from the New York Racing Association (NYRA), the nonprofit that runs Belmont and Saratoga and, until recently, Aqueduct The Guardian. The loan is to be repaid from NYRA’s share of slot-machine money from the Resorts World casino, nine miles away on the now-closed Aqueduct site. Aqueduct shut in June as part of the $555m project that made the new Belmont possible.
History has been kept in the details. At the heart of the paddock stands a centuries-old Japanese White Pine that inspired the Belmont Park logo. NYRA says the tree was surveyed and protected through demolition and construction and remains the centrepiece of the property. The operator is also preserving racing artwork and murals, and has stored wrought-iron gates from Jerome Park and fencing from the clubhouse entrance and paddock in the colours of the 13 Triple Crown winners for future use. The Triple Crown is America’s three-race series for three-year-olds.
The reopening is on a limited basis. NYRA billed 18-20 September as a Return to Racing weekend, with general admission from $7 per day NYRA. Tickets for opening day were extremely limited. The first race went off at 4:14 p.m. ET and was shown live on FOX, with the fall season scheduled to run to 6 December. The full build is expected to be finished by next spring.
What makes this stand out is the sound and the scale. Belmont was last renovated in 1968 and had grown vast and tired. Friday was smaller, louder and closer to the horses.
