The CCI5* at Burghley House runs 3 to 6 September 2026: dressage on Thursday and Friday, cross country on Saturday, jumping on Sunday.
Defender Burghley runs from Thursday 3 to Sunday 6 September 2026 in the park at Burghley House, and it is one of only a handful of CCI5* three-day events in the world. The first two days are dressage; Saturday is the cross country, over four miles and thirty fences, and it is the day the crowd comes for; Sunday closes with the show jumping on a course by Paul Connor. Around the competition sit the Members’ Restaurant, the Avebury Restaurant and the Pol Roger afternoon tea served beside the Wednesday trot-up, along with six hundred exhibitors in the shopping avenues. The Princess Royal is expected on the Sunday. The first Burghley, sixty years ago, drew nineteen competitors and twelve thousand people; it now draws eighty of the world’s best and a hundred and seventy-three thousand.