Clásico El Ensayo 2026 Schedule: What Time and How to Watch

The Clásico El Ensayo 2026 schedule has one fixed point so far: the date. Chile's oldest classic, run under the name El Ensayo Mega, is set for Sunday, November 29 at Club Hípico de Santiago, almost a month later than fans are used to.

Schedule: what time is the Clásico El Ensayo 2026?

The Clásico El Ensayo 2026 is on Sunday, November 29, 2026, at Club Hípico de Santiago, and the post time has not been announced yet. Once it is, US Eastern time will be two hours behind Santiago, so a race at a given hour in Chile goes off two hours earlier on the East Coast clock.

The rest of the conversion is just as simple, because Chile is on summer time in late November:

• Buenos Aires: same time as Santiago.
• Rapa Nui (Easter Island): two hours behind mainland Chile.
• Bogotá and Lima: two hours behind, the same as US Eastern.
• Mexico City: three hours behind.
• Madrid: four hours ahead.

For reference only: in 2025 the race was on Friday, October 31, as the 21st race of the card, scheduled for 7:10 p.m. Chile time, according to the Chilean sports site RedGol. That was last year, on a different day of the week, so do not treat it as this year's time.

El Ensayo is the feature of a long card. We will add the time here as soon as the club publishes the race-day program.

How to watch the Clásico El Ensayo 2026

The TV and streaming plan for 2026 has not been announced. No source we opened confirms a channel or a stream for this year.

What we can say is what happened last year. In 2025 the race aired live on Mega, the Chilean free-to-air channel whose name the race carries, as RedGol reported at the time.

Until there is an announcement, three things are worth doing:

1. Check the news page of Club Hípico de Santiago in race week, where the club posts the program and the entries.
2. Look at Mega's programming for Sunday, November 29, once it is published.
3. Come back to this page: we will update it when the time and the broadcast are confirmed.

Watching from outside Chile? Wait for the official word before you count on any signal. An international feed has not been confirmed.

Why El Ensayo is in late November this year

El Ensayo has usually been run in late October or at the very start of November. The 2025 edition was on October 31.

In November 2025 the club presented a redesigned 2026 calendar. Its deputy general manager, Roberto Palumbo, said the main circuit was ending too early and that the Ensayo was being run without enough time for the young horses to mature.

The club described a significant change in how its Group 1, Group 2, Group 3 and Listed races are spread through the year, including a supporting circuit of lower-grade races. The headline moves were four Group 1 races for the three-year-olds:

The idea is a ladder: each step is longer and comes with more time between races. The club also said it wants stronger fields in the Lyon and the Ensayo to lift the international rating of its Group 1 races.

The field as far as it is known

There is no field yet. As of November 12, no entries, no confirmed runners and no post draw have been published for El Ensayo 2026. What follows is form from the trials, not a list of runners.

Soldado Bruce

He won the Nacional Ricardo Lyon on November 1 with Jaime Medina aboard, by two lengths, in his first start at Club Hípico de Santiago. The club's own report says El Ensayo is his next challenge.

There is a story in the pedigree, too. He is a son of Robert Bruce, who won El Ensayo in 2017.

Makhulu

He won the Polla de Potrillos on August 30 over 1,700 meters in 1:39.29, a time the club called excellent. The son of Tiz the Law is trained by Ximeno Urenda, was ridden by Alejandro Maureira and runs for Stud Los Leones. He was not among the eleven runners in the Lyon, and no plan for El Ensayo has been published for him.

Kerouac

The filly, also by Tiz the Law, won the Polla de Potrancas and then ran second to Soldado Bruce in the Lyon against the colts. Fillies can win this race: Doña Clota did it in 2024. Whether Kerouac runs is not confirmed.

Nirzan

Second to Makhulu in the Polla de Potrillos, he also finished in the first four of the Lyon. He is the kind of steady horse who could move up as the distance grows.

What the Clásico El Ensayo is

El Ensayo is a Group 1 over 2,400 meters, about a mile and a half, on the turf course of Club Hípico de Santiago. It is for three-year-olds and has been run since 1873.

The club describes it as the fourth-oldest race in the Americas, behind the Queen's Plate, the Travers and the Belmont Stakes, and as the oldest classic in Latin America. That ranking is the club's own count: Keeneland's library, for one, traces the Phoenix Stakes in Kentucky back to 1831. It is also the first leg of Chile's Triple Crown, followed by the St. Leger at Hipódromo Chile and El Derby at Valparaíso Sporting.

A few numbers that put the race in context:

• Last Triple Crown winner: Kay Army, who won El Ensayo in 2023 and completed the sweep in El Derby in March 2024.
• Last year: Created won in the rain in 2025.
• The streak: jockey Oscar Ulloa and trainer Patricio Baeza have won the last five editions together, from Y Nada Más in 2021 to Created.
• The crowd: the club says about 50,000 people attended the 2015 edition.

New to racing terms? Our glossary covers the basics.

What to watch between now and race day

• The entries. The real field is known when the club publishes the entered horses; the post draw, which in past years came a few days later, sets the starting gates.
• The distance. None of the leading names has raced over 2,400 meters. The Polla is 1,700 and the Lyon is 2,000, so stamina is the open question for every one of them.
• Fresh horse or fit horse. Soldado Bruce arrives four weeks after a hard race. Makhulu, if he comes, would arrive off a much longer gap.
• The Ulloa and Baeza streak. Which horse they bring, and whether the run reaches six, will be one of the stories of the week.
• The time and the TV. Both are still missing. This page will carry them as soon as they are official.

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