Figures published as part of the Royal Family’s annual report on its finances showed how much was spent on official engagements – with Prince William’s trip to Saudi Arabia proving most costly
The Royal Family spent more than £3million on travel last year, including £160,733 on just four journeys on the Royal Train.
The Prince of Wales topped the annual list of the most expensive royal trips for the first time since his father became King. William’s official three-day visit to Saudi Arabia in February 2026, on behalf of the UK government, cost a total of £130,106, including spending on two additional planning trips by staff.
This was just ahead of the £126,946 in travel costs for the King and Queen’s four-day state visit to Italy in April 2025. William’s official tour of Brazil to host his Earthshot Awards and attend the COP summit also cost £79,000.
The figures have been published as part of the royal family’s yearly report on its finances, detailing money spent on the official engagements of the royal family. 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.
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.
During the visit the King and Pope Leo made history when they prayed together in a symbolic moment of unity for Anglicans and Roman Catholics across the globe.
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 a three-day official trip by the Princess Royal to Turkey in April 2025 (£48,090), a four-day official visit by the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester to Denmark in May 2025 (£35,817), and a two-day trip by the Duke of Edinburgh to Rome in May 2025 to attend to inauguration of Pope Leo XIV (£23,295).
Also included is a three-day trip by the Duchess of Edinburgh to Sarajevo in July 2025 to carry out engagements including meeting survivors of conflict-related sexual violence and attending a memorial service in Srebrenica to remember the victims of the 1995 genocide (£25,776), a three-day official visit by the Princess Royal to Ukraine in September and October 2025 (£28,081) and a 10-day official visit by the Duchess of Edinburgh in November 2025 to Peru, Panama, Guatemala and Belize (£57,643)
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.
It comes as the report also reveals the core funding of the monarchy is to jump to £100 million a year, almost doubling in the space of three years.
Under a new formula for calculating the Sovereign Grant, which pays for the royal family’s official duties and the upkeep of royal palaces, the Royal Household is to receive £99.9m as a core grant in 2027-28, a jump of £48.1 million compared with the core grant of £51.8m in 2024-25.
The change was decided upon by Royal Trustees – outgoing Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, Chancellor Rachel Reeves, and the King’s Keeper of the Privy Purse and Treasurer James Chalmers.
The boost will be used to pay for a backlog in maintenance at occupied royal palaces, strengthen cyber security at royal residences, and for the installation of energy efficient heating systems, with £11m set aside to replace boilers nearing the end of their life at Windsor Castle.
