The 2027 Belmont Stakes runs Saturday, June 5, 2027, the final leg of the Triple Crown, 13 days after that year's Preakness. It marks the race's return to a rebuilt Belmont Park on Long Island after two years away. What it does not yet mark, as of this writing, is a settled answer to the one question every Belmont preview asks: how long is the race actually going to be run?

Why the distance is an open question

The Belmont has traditionally been run at 1 1/2 miles, far longer than the Derby's 1 1/4 or the Preakness's 1 3/16, which is why it carries the nickname "Test of the Champion": a horse that wins all three Triple Crown races has to handle three different distances in five weeks. While Belmont Park was being rebuilt, the race moved temporarily to Saratoga Race Course and ran at a shorter 1 1/4 miles in 2024 and 2025, matching the track's own longest sensible distance there.

Belmont Park itself reopened in September 2026, and the 2027 race returns to it. Whether the distance goes back to the traditional 1 1/2 miles with it is, as of early September 2026, still undecided. Thoroughbred Daily News reported NYRA president and CEO Dave O'Rourke saying the question "will be contemplated, whether it's next year or in the future," and that the mile-and-a-half tradition "seems to be a headwind on the race to a certain degree" given how modern Thoroughbreds are bred and raced. No final decision had been announced at that point, and this page will be corrected once one is.

The Triple Crown's last, hardest jump

Whatever the final distance, the Belmont remains the race where Triple Crown bids have ended more often than they have succeeded: a horse that wins the Derby and the Preakness has gone on to lose the Belmont far more often than it has swept all three. That history is part of why the distance question matters to more than record books. A shorter Belmont would, by definition, ask less of a Triple Crown contender's stamina than the race has for most of its history, changing what "winning the Triple Crown" has actually demonstrated about a horse.

The spacing between the three 2027 Triple Crown races (Derby May 1, Preakness May 23, Belmont June 5) gives connections more rest than the old two-week, three-week pattern, which may matter more to a Triple Crown bid than a mile's difference in the Belmont's own distance.