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GB News reported that Prince William's February visit to Saudi Arabia was the costliest royal journey in the year ending March 2026. Total royal travel expenditure reached £3,316,024, with 37 journeys exceeding the £20,000 threshold.
Prince William's three-day trip to Saudi Arabia in February cost £130,106, making it the most expensive royal journey in the 12 months ending March 2026, GB News reported. The visit, undertaken on behalf of the British government, included two preparatory visits by palace staff and a meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
It narrowly exceeded the £126,946 spent on the King and Queen's four-day state visit to Italy in April 2025.
Total royal travel spending reached £3,316,024 for the period. Prince William's attendance at the COP30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil, in November ranked third at £78,542. The King and Queen's state visit to Vatican City in October 2025, where they prayed with Pope Leo XIV, cost £75,371.
The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh's week-long tour of Papua New Guinea and Japan in September cost £70,541. Staff planning for the recent royal visit to the United States and Bermuda added £66,060, with actual tour expenses to appear in next year's accounts. The Duchess of Edinburgh's ten-day tour of Peru, Panama, Guatemala and Belize in November cost £57,643.
The Princess Royal's three-day trip to Ankara, Turkey, in April cost £48,090, while her journey to Kyiv, Ukraine, cost £28,081. Four royal train journeys by the monarch to Lancaster, Staffordshire, Dartmouth and Clitheroe each cost between £34,109 and £48,460. The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester's four-day visit to Denmark in May cost £35,817.
The Duke of Edinburgh's two-day trip to Rome for Pope Leo XIV's inauguration in May cost £23,295. Royal helicopter usage totaled 177 flights at a cost of £733,063. The Princess Royal undertook 10 trips, while the Prince of Wales made four journeys.
The Duchess of Edinburgh traveled to Sarajevo in July for meetings with survivors of conflict-related sexual violence and a memorial for the Srebrenica genocide, spending £25,776. Buckingham Palace confirmed last year that the royal train would cease operations by 2027. The minimum reporting threshold for journeys rose from £17,000 to £20,000, with 37 individual journeys exceeding the new level.
Of listed journeys, 13 involved the King, 11 of them domestic. Neither the Queen nor the Princess of Wales appeared on the list for solo visits.
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