There is a moment, somewhere on The Mall, when Princess Anne Trooping the Colour 2026 becomes something more than pageantry. The Princess Royal, 75, rode out on horseback for the fourth time under her brother’s reign, wearing the Full Mounted Ceremonial uniform of The Blues and Royals (Royal Horse Guards and 1st Dragoons), and carrying the Gold Stick, one of the oldest personal offices in the British royal household.
She rode alongside Prince Edward and Prince William in a procession that began when the Duchess of Edinburgh and Sir Tim Laurence were the first to emerge from Buckingham Palace, followed by the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester. King Charles rode in an Ascot Landau with Queen Camilla, having stepped back from riding horseback himself this year due to his ongoing health battle. The Princess of Wales, in a blue and white Catherine Walker creation, was joined by her three children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis.
What Princess Anne Wore: The Uniform of the Blues and Royals
As Colonel of the Blues and Royals, Princess Anne’s uniform carries a weight of detail that repays close attention. The Full Mounted Ceremonial dress is adorned with the Garter Star and Sash, Thistle Star and GCVO Star, alongside full-sized medals and a CMM neck decoration. She also wore aiguilettes, and her uniform bears the cypher of King Charles III, reflecting her role as a Personal Aide-de-Camp to His Majesty.
The Gold Stick she carried is an office that dates from the Tudor period. Originally, two officers holding this role were placed close to the monarch as personal protection, their physical proximity to the sovereign a matter of genuine security rather than tradition. Since Queen Victoria, those duties have been largely ceremonial. On occasions such as the State Opening of Parliament or, as here, a major royal ceremony, it is the Colonel of the Life Guards or the Colonel of the Blues and Royals who serves as Gold Stick-in-Waiting. She also carried a Blues and Royals Sword.
For a woman who represented Great Britain in the 1976 Olympics as an accomplished horsewoman, the mounted procession is familiar ground. Even so, the sheer weight of uniform, medals and historical office she wore down The Mall is worth pausing over.
Princess Anne Trooping the Colour 2026: The Grenadier Guards Take the Honour
The regiment Trooping their Colour this year is the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, the most senior infantry regiment in the British Army. It is the first time in 90 years that the regiment has Trooped the Colour before a King, a detail that lends the 2026 parade its own particular resonance within a ceremony already saturated with history.
The Grenadier Guards’ connection to the Sovereign runs deep. In 1656, King Charles II gave orders that the command, or Captaincy, of the first Company of the first regiment of Foot Guards be reserved for the Sovereign, to be called The King’s Own Company. That command has been held by the Sovereign in every reign since. The regiment’s relationship with the Crown is, in other words, not ceremonial attachment but constitutional continuity.
Trooping the Colour itself traces its origins to the early eighteenth century or earlier, when the colours, meaning the flags of the battalion, were carried through the ranks so that soldiers could learn to recognise them in the noise and chaos of battle. The ceremony is formally titled the King’s Birthday Parade, and its structure has changed little in its essentials: the procession, the parade on Horse Guards, the carriage rides, the balcony appearance at Buckingham Palace, and the RAF flypast over London.
The King’s Own Long History With the Parade
King Charles III has attended Trooping the Colour since 1951, when he rode in a carriage as a three-year-old with his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, and his aunt, Princess Margaret. He first rode in the parade himself as Colonel of the Welsh Guards in 1975. This year marks the fourth Trooping the Colour of his reign, a reign in which the ceremony has had to flex around his health: where he once rode alongside his sister and his son, he now watches the horses from a carriage.
The enduring image of 2026, though, belongs to Princess Anne: upright in the saddle, Gold Stick in hand, the cypher of her brother on her chest, riding the kind of parade that most people only ever see from behind a barrier on The Mall or through the lens of a television camera.