Madness at York Racecourse: tickets on sale tomorrow

York Racecourse has announced a double bill for next summer that should be easy to sell: Madness headlining the Music Showcase on Friday 23 July 2027, with a full day of racing before the band takes the stage in the evening. Tickets start at £15, and they go on sale at 10am tomorrow, Friday 25 September, through the racecourse website and via Ticketmaster.

If you are planning to make a day of it, the Grandstand and Paddock enclosure is the place to be. It is the racecourse's largest enclosure, with trackside views, food outlets and access to the Parade Ring, Pre-Parade Ring and Main Betting Ring. Admission there starts at £42 a head for a group of six, part of a price freeze running until the end of 2026, and racegoers aged 5 to 17 can get in for £15, though that is subject to limited availability. There are no booking fees and car parking is free. Other enclosures include the County Stand and the Clocktower Enclosure, and under-18s go free when accompanied, so it is worth checking the event-specific availability and pricing when you book.

The racing is not an afterthought. A six-race card precedes the concert, headlined by the European Breeders Fund Lyric Stakes, a £70,000 Listed contest. A second headline music act for the weekend is still to be announced and is scheduled to play the following day, Saturday 24 July, so the whole weekend could end up being worth a trip if you are coming from further afield.

For anyone who needs a reminder of who they are booking: Madness formed in Camden Town in 1976 and were at the front of the late-1970s and early-1980s ska and two-tone revival. They still perform with six of the seven members of their original line-up, and their best-known songs cover a lot of ground, from One Step Beyond, Baggy Trousers, My Girl and It Must Be Love to House of Fun, their only UK number one, and Our House, their biggest US hit. Between 1980 and 1986 their singles spent 214 weeks in the UK chart, tying them with UB40 for the most weeks any group spent there in the 1980s. They have played Glastonbury and Camp Bestival, performed from the roof of Buckingham Palace for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee party and appeared at the closing ceremony of the London Olympics in 2012. Their most recent studio album, Theatre of the Absurd Presents C'est la Vie, came out in November 2023 and became their first UK number-one studio album.

James Brennan, Head of Marketing and Sponsorship at York Racecourse, summed it up simply: The energy and sense of fun that Madness bring to every show is just what people need – a fun evening, hopefully in summer sunshine, that they can really look forward to enjoying. Everyone will have a favourite Madness song and it will be fantastic to hear them ring out around the Knavesmire. We will be on sale with a price freeze for next year, so it makes sense to lock in the date.

The racecourse sits on the Knavesmire and stages 18 days of high-quality flat racing between May and October, including the four-day Ebor Festival each August. It has been running since 1731, and in 1851 it hosted the Great Match, when The Flying Dutchman beat Voltigeur in front of an estimated 150,000 people. Since then it has taken in Royal Ascot at York in 2005, the Olympic Torch and Paralympic Lantern in 2012 and the Tour de France in 2014.