Aintree Racecourse

Aintree Racecourse as a corporate venue

Aintree Racecourse in Liverpool is a rare kind of address: a world-famous sporting stage, a several-hundred-delegate conference centre and a former Formula 1 Grand Prix circuit, around 15 to 20 minutes from Liverpool city centre. It is best known worldwide for the Grand National, but it works as a functioning corporate venue every month of the year, hosting race days, conferences, exhibitions and private events long after the festival crowds have gone home.

For event planners, the appeal is that combination: a genuinely famous address with the infrastructure of a purpose-built conference venue behind it. Private boxes, suites and hard-standing exhibition space sit alongside the racecourse itself. The result is that the same site that hosts one of the world's great sporting occasions each April can just as easily take a boardroom session or a product launch during the rest of the year.

Race days beyond the Grand National

Aintree hosts jump racing across autumn and winter, including the Grand Sefton meeting and the Becher Chase, both run over the Grand National fences, alongside a Boxing Day card. These fixtures are a year-round way into Aintree's jump racing on a smaller footing than the Grand National festival itself.

They also suit a different kind of client entertaining: smaller groups, a more relaxed pace, a genuine race day atmosphere on a working Jockey Club track that most of the racing public never associates with anything beyond the National. As part of the UK's wider horse racing calendar, they give clients the racecourse experience away from the crush of the festival's biggest weekend.

Conferences, meetings and events at Aintree

Aintree Racecourse operates as a conference and events venue throughout the year, entirely separate from its race days. Its private boxes and suites suit hospitality groups of typical corporate sizes, while its larger halls and hard-standing space can host exhibitions, product launches and large-format events for several hundred or several thousand guests, depending on the space used.

Meeting and boardroom space

The venue offers a range of function rooms suited to meetings, training days, away days and smaller conferences. Corporate bookers get a choice of room sizes rather than a single fixed conference suite.

Private boxes and suites

Aintree's grandstands, including the Princess Royal Stand and the Lord Sefton Stand, hold a run of private boxes between them, with indoor hospitality space across the venue accommodating up to around 600 delegates. This is the tier most corporate hospitality and client entertaining bookings use, whether for a race day or a stand-alone event.

Large-scale exhibition and event space

For bigger events, the Red Rum Garden offers a large outdoor space, and the venue's roughly 3,700 sqm of hard standing suits exhibitions, product launches and large-format staging that would not fit inside a conventional conference centre.

Aintree's racing and motor racing heritage

Aintree Racecourse has staged racing since 1829, with jump racing from 1836, and its roll of honour includes Red Rum's legendary three-time Grand National victory in the 1970s. Less widely known is that Aintree was also a Formula 1 Grand Prix circuit between 1955 and 1962, hosting Stirling Moss's first world championship win in 1955, before the race moved to its current home.

That motor racing chapter is part of what makes Aintree an unusual corporate venue. The same tarmac and grandstands that once hosted a Grand Prix now host conferences, exhibitions and hospitality suites, so the site carries a sporting history well beyond horse racing alone.

Getting to Aintree Racecourse and staying nearby

Aintree Racecourse sits a short journey from Liverpool city centre, with a dedicated rail station at Aintree and road access from the M57 and M58. A full breakdown of routes, journey times and event-day travel is covered in how to get to Aintree Racecourse.

Staying nearby

Liverpool's city centre hotel market is within easy reach of the racecourse, so out-of-town delegates and hospitality guests have a wide choice of places to stay the night before or after an event. There is no need to base a group right next to the venue itself.

Grand National hospitality at Aintree

Aintree's biggest event by far is the Grand National, the three-day festival run each April that the venue is famous for worldwide. Grand National 2027 hospitality covers the festival in full, from Opening Day through to Grand National Day itself, and the Grand National Festival 2027 page carries the confirmed 2027 dates and a day-by-day breakdown for anyone planning corporate hospitality around the race.