Prince William records most expensive royal trip since his father became King

Prince William’s state visit to Saudi Arabia has topped the list of the most expensive annual royal trips, a first for him since his father became king.

The three-day engagement, conducted on behalf of the UK government in February 2026, cost £130,106, including two pre-planning trips.

This narrowly exceeded the £126,946 spent on travel for the King and Queen’s four-day state visit to Italy in April 2025.

These figures were published in the royal family’s annual financial report.

The report covers the 12 months to March 2026 and includes a breakdown of all trips taken by family members where travel costs were at least £20,000.

The previous three reports for 2022/23, 2023/24 and 2024/25 all listed the King and Queen as taking the most expensive trip in each 12-month period.

The minimum cost of journeys included in the 2025/26 breakdown has been increased from £17,000 to £20,000; This means it is not possible to make direct comparisons in the number of trips from year to year.

A total of 37 separate cruises are listed throughout the year through March 2026.

Of these, 13 involved the King and 11 of these were in the United Kingdom.

These included four trips by royal train to perform engagements in Lancaster in June 2025 (cost £48,460), Staffordshire in October (£34,109), Dartmouth in December (£37,466) and Clitheroe in Lancashire in February 2026 (£40,738).

Buckingham Palace announced last year that the royal train would be taken out of service by 2027 to save money.

The King’s two overseas trips listed in the 2025/26 report were both undertaken with the Queen: a state visit to Italy in April 2025 and a visit to Pope Benedict XIV in October the same year. State visit to Vatican City in Rome to meet with Leo.

Travel costs for the Vatican City visit totaled £75,371, making it the fourth most expensive trip of 2025/26, just behind the Prince of Wales’s two-day visit to Belem in Brazil to attend the COP30 climate summit in November (£78,542) but ahead of the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh’s seven-day state visit to Papua New Guinea and Japan in September (£70,541).

All of King’s other travel expenses listed in the report are for charter flights within the United Kingdom.

Just outside the top five most expensive trips is one that doesn’t involve any royals directly.

This was a planning visit to the United States and Bermuda in late February and early March 2026 by staff working for the King and Queen to prepare for the royal visit two months later, taking travel costs to £66,060.

Expenditure on Charles and Camilla’s actual visit to the US and Bermuda will be included in the 2026/27 report to be published next summer.

Other trips outside the UK on the 2025/26 list include:

As well as the 13 trips on the list involving the King or the King and Queen, 10 were undertaken by the Princess Royal; four by the Prince of Wales (one with the Princess of Wales); three by the Duke of Edinburgh; two by the Duchess of Edinburgh, one jointly by the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh; one by the Duke of Gloucester; one by the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester; and one by the Duke of Kent.

No solo visits by the Queen or Princess of Wales are on the list.

Some 177 helicopter journeys were taken by members of the royal family in 2025/26, with the total cost coming to £733,063.

Total spend on trips over the 12-month period was £3,316,024, including trips costing over and under £20,000.