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

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

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

This narrowly surpassed 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 journeys by family members where travel costs were at least £20,000.

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

The minimum cost of journeys included in the breakdown for 2025/26 has been raised from £17,000 to £20,000, meaning a direct year on year comparison in the number of trips is not possible.

A total of 37 separate journeys are listed for the year to March 2026.

Some 13 of these involved the King, 11 of which were within the UK.

These included four trips on the royal train to carry out engagements in Lancaster in June 2025 (a cost of £48,460), in Staffordshire in October (£34,109), in 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 journeys listed in the 2025/26 report were both undertaken with the Queen: the state visit to Italy in April 2025, and the state visit to the Vatican City in Rome in October of the same year, to meet Pope Leo XIV.

Travel costs for the visit to the Vatican City came to £75,371, making it the fourth most expensive trip in 2025/26, just behind the Prince of Wales’ two-day visit to Belem in Brazil in November to attend the Cop30 climate summit (£78,542), but ahead of the official seven-day visit by the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh to Papua New Guinea and Japan in September (£70,541).

The King’s other travel costs listed in the report are all for chartered flights within the UK.

Just outside the top five most expensive journeys is a trip that did not directly involve any royals.

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

Spending on the actual visit by Charles and Camilla to the US and Bermuda will be included in the 2026/27 report, published next summer.

The other journeys outside the UK to appear on the 2025/26 list are:

Aside from the 13 trips on the list that involved either the King or the King and the Queen, 10 were undertaken by the Princess Royal; four by the Prince of Wales (including one with the Princess of Wales); three by the Duke of Edinburgh; two by the Duchess of Edinburgh, one by the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh together; one by the Duke of Gloucester; one by the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester; and one by the Duke of Kent.

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

Some 177 helicopter journeys were made by members of the royal family in 2025/26, costing £733,063 overall.

Total spending on journeys across the 12-month period, including trips that cost both above and below £20,000, was £3,316,024.