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The 2026 Kentucky Derby will take place on Saturday, May 2, at 6:57 p.m. ET at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky. “The Fastest Two Minutes in Sports” will be broadcast live on NBC.

You can wager on the 152nd Kentucky Derby at a variety of racebooks, including FanDuel Racing, which is offering new users a welcome bonus with the FanDuel Racing promo code: Bet $5, get $25 in racing bonus.

Renegade, which is owned by Mike Repole, is the morning-line favorite to win the Run for the Roses. The 3-year-old colt will look to become the first horse since Ferdinand in 1986 to win the Kentucky Derby from the No. 1 position.

History looms large over other gates — most notably No. 17, which has never produced a winner. The No. 2 spot has also struggled, last winning with Affirmed in 1978, leaving Albus (30-1) hoping to defy decades of precedent. 

Meanwhile, post 5 has produced the most all-time winners with 10. Posts 8 and 10 have consistently delivered above-average results, too, only adding intrigue for contenders like No. 8 So Happy (15-1) and No. 10 Wonder Dean (30-1).

The 2026 field features 19 horses — rather than the maximum of 20 — competing for a $5 million purse, with $3.1 million going to the winner. Churchill Downs officials announced that The Puma was scratched less than 12 hours before the 6:57 p.m. ET post time due to a swollen leg caused by a skin infection.

Bettors can tune in via NBC starting at 2:30 p.m. ET, with early streaming on Peacock at noon.

The simplest wager in the game. Predict the winner and get paid out based on its odds. For example, if you bet a horse that goes off at 5-1, you get five times your stake, so a $5 bet at those odds would net you $25.

Outside of bets on the winner, exactas are perhaps the most popular form of wagering among horseplayers. An exacta requires the bettor to correctly predict the first and second-place finishers, in exact order, in a single race.

If you select to wager using an exacta box, you just need to predict the first and second-place finishers in any order. That said, if you choose to box the horses, your wager would double (assuming you are picking two entrants).

A trifecta operates like the exacta, except it requires the bettor to predict the top-three finishers in a race. Like exactas, you can choose to box trifectas, which would increase the stake in the same fashion as the exacta.

Another exotic, the superfecta operates in the same way as exactas and trifectas, except it requires you to predict the first, second, third, and fourth-place finishers in a given race.

This is an incredibly difficult wager to win, but it brings with it immense upside.

Horizontal wagers are incredibly popular among seasoned horseplayers. They almost operate like a parlay in sports betting.

A Pick 3 requires you to correctly predict the winner of three consecutive races, while a Pick 4 does the same for four races, and so on.

On big race days, the pools for these horizontal wagers can reach staggering amounts.

Michael Leboff is a long-suffering Islanders fan, but a long-profiting sports bettor with 10 years of experience in the gambling industry. He loves using game theory to help punters win bracket pools, find long shots, and learn how to beat the market in mainstream and niche sports.