The Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe is the defining race of the European flat season, run over a mile and a half at ParisLongchamp each October and carrying a prize fund that reflects its status as the continent’s most prestigious middle-distance contest. With ante-post for upcoming markets already beginning to take shape and horse racing betting interest in the race growing throughout the summer, we are still only in June, yet one eye is always on Longchamp. Here is a look at the five most recent winners of Europe’s greatest race.
Daryz: 2025
Few Arc victories in recent memory carried the emotional weight of Daryz’s triumph on 5 October 2025. The Aga Khan IV, one of the most influential owner-breeders in the history of flat racing, had died in February of that year, aged 88, and his famous green and red colours had not been carried to Arc victory since the extraordinary Zarkava in 2008.
Daryz, trained in Chantilly by Francis-Henri Graffard and ridden by Mickael Barzalona, both winning the race for the first time, won by a head from the Irish favourite Minnie Hauk in a breathless finish that was not decided until the final strides. It was the Aga Khan family’s record eighth Arc victory, and the scenes in the winner’s enclosure, with Princess Zahra Aga Khan receiving the trophy on behalf of her late father, were among the most moving in the race’s history.
Daryz has since continued his remarkable form into 2026, winning the Prix Ganay and the newly renamed Prix Aga Khan IV in devastating fashion, and heads towards the Prince of Wales’s Stakes at Royal Ascot as one of the most exciting horses in Europe.
Bluestocking: 2024
Bluestocking’s Arc victory was the kind of result that changes careers and defines legacies. Supplemented into the race at a cost of €120,000 by her Juddmonte owners just days before the race, following her win in the Prix Vermeille over the same course and distance, the four-year-old filly was trained by Ralph Beckett, who admitted afterwards that he never thought she would win.
Rossa Ryan, the 24-year-old Irish jockey from Tuam in County Galway, had other ideas. He slotted Bluestocking in behind the early pace set by Los Angeles, made his move into the straight, and held off the advancing Aventure to win by over a length.
It was the biggest win of Beckett’s training career, a seventh Arc for Juddmonte and a record for any owner in the race’s history, and Ryan described the moment as surreal. A horse can really change your life, he said afterwards. She changed his.
Ace Impact: 2023
Ace Impact’s Arc was one of the great individual performances the race has produced. The son of Cracksman, trained by Jean-Claude Rouget and ridden by Cristian Demuro, arrived at Longchamp unbeaten in five starts and facing the mile and a half trip for the very first time.
Neither factor appeared to concern him in the slightest. Demuro produced him with a devastating late burst of acceleration that left the field trailing and won with authority. Rouget, reflecting on a second Arc in four years having won with Sottsass in 2020, described it as a journey that had started in Pau a long time ago.
Ace Impact was named Cartier Horse of the Year for 2023, retired unbeaten in six starts, and was widely regarded as one of the most talented horses to have won the race in the modern era.
Alpinista: 2022
Alpinista’s Arc victory was a triumph for patience and longevity. Trained by Sir Mark Prescott and ridden by Luke Morris, she was a five-year-old mare who had built her campaign across a long season, winning the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes, the Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud, and the Grosser Preis von Bayern before arriving at Longchamp.
Her Arc win was the first in the race for Sir Mark Prescott, one of the most respected and distinctive trainers in the British game, and it came in the famous purple and white colours of owner Kirsten Rausing.
She is a daughter of Frankel, underlining the Arc-winning potential that Juddmonte’s great stallion has consistently demonstrated through his offspring.
Torquator Tasso: 2021
The most surprising Arc result of the modern era. Torquator Tasso, a German-trained six-year-old under trainer Marcel Weiss and ridden by Rene Piechulek, started at odds of around 80-1 in most markets and produced one of the great upsets in the race’s history.
The German-bred son of Adlerflug had never previously run at Group 1 level outside Germany, and nothing in his form suggested he was capable of winning Europe’s greatest race. He was. Settling beautifully in mid-division before producing a powerful, sustained run from two furlongs out, he held on to win from Tarnawa and Sealiway.
It remains the longest-priced Arc winner in living memory, a result that encapsulates everything that makes the race so compelling and so impossible to predict with certainty, however strong the ante-post market may look in the months beforehand.
