King Charles III will take the salute at Horse Guards Parade next Saturday as more than 1,400 soldiers, 200 horses, and 400 musicians mark the monarch’s official birthday — with the anti-monarchy group Republic promising a visible presence on The Mall.
One week from today, London stops.
The King’s Birthday Parade — Trooping the Colour — takes place on Saturday 13 June 2026. It is the centrepiece of the royal calendar. It has been so for the better part of three centuries. This year, the King’s Company of the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards will troop their Colour in the presence of His Majesty King Charles III.
The mechanics are familiar but worth stating. More than 1,400 soldiers of the Household Division, 200 horses, and 400 musicians will assemble at Horse Guards Parade off Whitehall. The King will process from Buckingham Palace down The Mall, take the salute, inspect the Colour, and return to the Palace. The Royal Family will appear on the balcony. The RAF will conduct a flypast at 1pm. It will be precise. It will be enormous. It will be very loud.
This is the third Trooping the Colour of King Charles’s reign. The first, in 2023, saw him ride on horseback — the first reigning monarch to do so since Queen Elizabeth II in 1986. The second, in 2024, was notable for different reasons: the King had recently resumed public duties following his cancer diagnosis, and the Princess of Wales was absent from the Colonel’s Review as she continued her own recovery. Last year’s ceremony returned closer to full strength, with the Wales children — George, Charlotte, and Louis — drawing considerable attention on the balcony, as they reliably do.
This year, the Colonel’s Review — the second of three preparatory ceremonies — took place today, 6 June, the same day as Peter Phillips’s wedding in Kemble. A busy Saturday for the Royal Family by any measure.
The occasion will not pass without comment from Republic, the anti-monarchy campaign group, which has confirmed it will stage a peaceful protest on The Mall from 8.30am. The group has mounted demonstrations at Trooping the Colour in each of the past two years. Their position is straightforward and consistently stated: that the ceremony represents unearned privilege dressed in military uniform. The palace has not responded to their announcement. It rarely does.
What Republic’s presence does, whether intentionally or not, is provide an annual reminder that the ceremony exists in a context — one of declining republican sentiment among the older population but rising scepticism among the young. The crowd on The Mall will be large, enthusiastic, and largely tourist-heavy. The protesters will be smaller, visible, and entirely within their rights. Both will be there. Both, in their way, are part of the story.
The broadcast is live on BBC One from the morning of 13 June. For those attending in person, The Mall is free and open, though early arrival is advisable. Seated tickets on Horse Guards Parade were allocated by ballot, which closed in March.
The palace has released no further details about the day’s programme. It rarely needs to. The ceremony speaks for itself.
Marcus Webb is Crown & Court’s Royal News Correspondent. Fleet Street trained, with twenty years covering the British royal family, he has stood outside more palaces in the rain than he cares to count.
“The palace says nothing. Which tells you everything.”
