The World Hen Racing Championship Lasts Three Seconds When It Goes Well and the Hens Are Hired at the Pub

The World Championship Hen Racing is held on the first Saturday of August outside the Barley Mow pub on The Dale in Bonsall, Derbyshire. The 2026 edition ran on 1 August and was billed as a champion of champions contest.

The course is thirty to forty feet long. Heats run through the afternoon into a grand final. The fastest recorded winning run is three seconds, which tells you both that a hen can cover forty feet quickly and that most of them do not.

Handlers are not allowed to touch the birds. The permitted method is inducement: mealworms or corn held at the finish line, and a great deal of encouragement. A hen presented with this arrangement is roughly as likely to walk backwards, stop to investigate the grass, or leave the course entirely.

Since 2023, competitors have had to hire a hen at the venue rather than bringing their own — a five pound charity donation was the rate quoted in 2017. That rule change removed the main source of unfairness in the event, which was that people who kept chickens had been arriving with birds they had practised on.

Prizes are bags of grain, a trophy for the winning team, and, as the organisers put it, kudos. There is no cash prize, which is consistent across most of the British novelty championship circuit and is part of what keeps these events amateur rather than professional.

The day is free to attend and runs alongside a beer festival supplied by Thornbridge Brewery, a barbecue and live music. Bonsall is a village of a few hundred people; the hen race is the reason most outsiders have heard of it.

No 2026 winner has been reported, and neither the event's founding year nor a list of past champions appears in any accessible record.