Where Is the Belmont Stakes? This Year's Location and the Race's History

Key Takeaways:

• For the second year running, the Belmont Stakes will be run at Saratoga Race Course because of the ongoing construction at Belmont Park; if all goes according to plan, the Belmont will return to the track bearing its namesake in 2026.
• Rather than its traditional length of 1½ miles, Saratoga is hosting a shorter race at 1¼ miles.
• Saratoga has shown to be a useful venue for future Travers Stakes indicators, as shown in 2024 with horses like Sierra Leone and Dornoch.

The 2025 Belmont Stakes happens on Saturday, June 7, but it may surprise you where it is being run.

The Belmont Stakes is the flagship race at Belmont Park, located in Elmont, New York. However, for the second straight year, the race is not being run at Belmont Park at all. Instead, the race and the entire Belmont Stakes Racing Festival are being run upstate, at Saratoga Race Course.

The move is due to a construction project by the New York Racing Association. The track is being rebuilt, meaning most of the regular Belmont Park racing is happening at Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens, New York. However, the Belmont Stakes Racing Festival is a special case. Saratoga Race Course and its celebratory feeling are perfect for one of the best weekends of the horse racing year. The new Belmont Park is scheduled to open in 2026, and the Belmont Stakes will make its triumphant return to the namesake track then.

Even though the Belmont Stakes has found a home at Belmont Park, this is not the first time the race has been run somewhere else. Most of its previous homes have been other tracks in the New York City area, and they include both tracks that still exist and tracks that have been lost to the sands of time.

This is the history of where the Belmont Stakes has been run, from its origin in 1867 to the present day.

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Belmont Stakes Venue History

Though it is now a mid-June feature and the final leg of the series, the Belmont Stakes predates the concept of an American Triple Crown of Thoroughbred racing. In fact, it is the oldest of the Triple Crown races. It was first run in 1867: six years before the first Preakness Stakes, eight years before the first Kentucky Derby, and 30 years before the opening of Belmont Park.

Jerome Park

Jerome Park was a racetrack that opened in 1866 in a section of Westchester County, New York, land that has since been annexed as part of the Bronx. The Belmont Stakes was first run the next year, in 1867. It makes sense that a feature race at Jerome would have taken its name from Thoroughbred owner and financier August Belmont, Sr.: after all, Belmont founded Jerome Park along with Leonard Walter Jerome, the grandfather of Winston Churchill.

That very first Belmont Stakes was won by the great filly Ruthless, still one of only three fillies to win the race. Other Hall of Fame inductees to win the Belmont Stakes during its Jerome Park days include Harry Bassett (1871), Duke of Magenta (1878), and Hanover (1887).

The last running of the Belmont Stakes at Jerome Park happened in 1889. The property was condemned by New York City in order to build the Jerome Park Reservoir, which was necessary to hold enough water to support the area’s burgeoning population.

Morris Park

The end of Jerome Park was not the end of the Belmont Stakes, however. Starting with the 1890 edition, it was contested at Morris Park. Like Jerome Park, Morris Park was on Westchester County land that is part of the present-day Bronx. The racetrack, opened in 1889 to cover for the planned closure of Jerome Park, hosted the Belmont Stakes from 1890 through 1904.

Morris Park has the distinction of being the only racetrack to host two of what are now considered the American Triple Crown races in the same year. In 1890, the Preakness and the Belmont were run on the same day.

The 1890 Preakness Stakes was the only time a race recognized as one of the American three-year-old classics allowed older horses; that race was a handicap for ages three and up. Four horses between the ages of four and eight ran, with five-year-old Montague prevailing in dominant fashion. The 1890 Belmont, run on the same day, was limited to sophomores and was won by Burlington.

Two horses who are now in the Hall of Fame won the Belmont Stakes during its Morris Park days: Henry of Navarre (1894) and Commando (1901).

Into the early 1900s, Morris Park became a less fashionable place for high society. Attendance was falling, and excitement was shifting to a new racetrack being built further down Long Island. The final edition of the Belmont Stakes at Morris Park was run in 1904.

Belmont Park

August Belmont, Jr., son of the co-founder of Jerome Park, co-founded Belmont with William C. Whitney, another scion of a New York family famous for its involvement in Thoroughbred racing. The track in Elmont, New York, which opened in 1905, has been one of America’s showpiece tracks for almost 120 years.

The first-ever edition of the Belmont Stakes at the new Belmont course turned out to be one of the most historically significant ones. In 1905, Tanya, who had been bred by William C. Whitney, became only the second filly to win the race.

Many of the horses synonymous with the Belmont Stakes and the Triple Crown raced here. All 13 Triple Crown champions, starting with Sir Barton in 1919, all the way through Justify in 2018, completed their sweeps at Belmont. Other highlights among Belmont winners at its longest-running home include the great Man O’ War (1920), fan favorite and important sire Native Dancer (1953), modern-day super-sire A. P. Indy (1992), and the filly Rags to Riches (2007), who nosed out the great Curlin.

Belmont remains the traditional home of the Belmont Stakes. Even though it has occasionally been contested at other tracks during this phase of its history due to construction projects, the third jewel of the Triple Crown has always made it back home to the track that shares its name.

Aqueduct Racetrack

The brief stint of the Belmont Stakes in Saratoga Springs will not be its first move to another track due to renovations. From 1963 through 1967, during a rebuilding of the grandstand at Belmont, the third jewel of the Triple Crown was held at Aqueduct, in the heart of Queens.

One Hall of Fame inductee won the Belmont during its stint at Aqueduct: the great Damascus, who won in 1967. The first winner during the Aqueduct years, Chateaugay (1963), went on to be named three-year-old champion.

The Belmont Stakes returned to its traditional home at Belmont in 1968, when the facility had been rebuilt.

Saratoga Race Course

The 2024 Belmont Stakes was the first edition of the race to be held outside of the New York City metropolitan area. Though most of the racing at Belmont has been relocated to Aqueduct during the current grandstand renovation project, NYRA moved the Belmont Stakes Racing Festival to Saratoga Race Course in Saratoga Springs for 2024 and 2025. Instead of being near New York City, Saratoga Springs is upstate, about a 40-minute drive north of Albany.

Because of the configuration of the Saratoga dirt course, the Belmont Stakes could not be run at its traditional 1 ½-mile distance. Instead, the race is contested at 1 ¼ miles, a distance the Saratoga dirt track can support without placing the starting gate on a turn.

The 1 ¼-mile trip is shorter than the traditional Belmont Stakes distance. However, especially from a handicapping perspective, there is a silver lining: Saratoga’s signature summer race, the Travers Stakes, is also run over the exact same course and distance. Usually, when handicapping the Travers, the horses are trying ten furlongs at Saratoga for the first time. However, with the Belmont moved there now, you can get a little early information.

Good Belmont Stakes contenders at Saratoga can be live to run back well in the Travers. And sure enough, two horses from the 2024 Belmont Stakes superfecta, Sierra Leone and Dornoch, ran in the superfecta in the Travers Stakes as well. Travers runner-up Thorpedo Anna also shined during the Belmont Stakes Racing Festival at the Spa last year—she crossed the finish line first in the Acorn (G1).

Even though 2024 Travers winner Fierceness did not contest the Belmont Stakes at Saratoga, and still had to prove himself at 1 ¼ miles, he was well proven over the course at Saratoga. He had broken his maiden there as a juvenile, and won the Jim Dandy (G2) earlier in the Saratoga summer meet.

Back to Belmont Park

The Belmont grandstand project was expected to last at least two years. Though it will not be completely finished by Belmont Stakes Day 2026, five weeks after the first Saturday in May, enough of the project should be finished to make the track ready for racing, and to have room for visitors on Belmont Day. With that, expect the final jewel of the Triple Crown to return to its usual home at Belmont Park in June of 2026.

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