President Trump will arrive in London on Tuesday evening for a state visit. If the news sounds familiar, that’s because it is.
The president already visited the United Kingdom once in his formal capacity as U.S. head of state, during his first term in 2019. Second state visits, it turns out, are exceedingly rare — as a delighted Trump made sure to note earlier this year when British Prime Minister Keir Starmer personally delivered his second invitation.
“I was just notified by letter from King Charles that he’s extended through the prime minister a historic second state visit to the United Kingdom,” Trump said at the time. “And that’s a great honor because it’s never happened before.”
So what do the royals have planned for the president and first lady Melania Trump? How much of the trip will be ceremonial — and how much will be geopolitical? Will security increase in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s shooting death? And why is Trump so keen to return to the U.K. anyway?
Here’s everything we know so far.
Hanging with the royals
Politically, Starmer is Trump’s U.K. counterpart; the prime minister is “head of government.” But the country’s formal head of state is King Charles III — so it will be Charles and his wife, Queen Camilla, who will be rolling out the red carpet for the Trumps. (Charles’s mother, Queen Elizabeth II, hosted the president and the first lady in 2019.)
Most of the ceremonial action will take place on Wednesday at the nearly 1,000-year-old Windsor Castle, west of London. There, Charles, Camilla and the Trumps — as well as William and Kate, the Prince and Princess of Wales — will ride in an open carriage procession through the estate before participating in a series of ceremonies: an honor-guard welcome in the quadrangle of Windsor Castle; a visit to St. George’s Chapel to privately lay a wreath on the tomb of Queen Elizabeth II; and a military “beating retreat” display with fighter jets overhead.
“Hundreds of military personnel will take part in the ceremonies — mounted troops, foot guards and musicians — after months of rehearsals,” the Associated Press reports.
Mounted military personnel take part in rehearsals on Sept. 15. (Toby Shepheard/AFP via Getty Images)
In the evening, everyone will attend a sumptuous state banquet served on 200-year-old silver at a 164-feet-long mahogany table.
The next day (Thursday) will be less pomp, more substance. Trump will meet Starmer at Chequers, the grand country manor granted to sitting prime ministers; the two are expected to sign an agreement to help companies from one country build nuclear projects in the other.
Meanwhile, Princess Kate and Melania Trump will head to Frogmore Gardens in Windsor for a hands-on, outdoor engagement with young Scouts — their first official joint appearance.
Kate has said that outdoor time played a vital role in her recent recovery from cancer.
“I really felt like I needed to get the sun,” she told hospital patients earlier this year. “You need loads of water and loads of sunlight.”
The Trumps will fly home Thursday evening.
What’s at stake
State visits tend not to be high-stakes affairs. But the “special relationship” between the U.S. and the U.K. has been tested lately by Trump’s tariffs and his reluctance to continue supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia.
King Charles is constitutionally barred from doing or saying anything even remotely political. But the royals remain “a robust instrument of ‘soft power,’” says the AP, “which the elected government uses to reward friends and wring concessions out of reluctant allies.”
Trump seems particularly susceptible to this form of persuasion. His Scottish-born mother was “a big fan of the queen,” he told podcaster Miranda Devine in July, adding that “any time the queen was on television, my mother liked watching. She said, ‘Oh, the queen’s on.'”
Windsor Castle in the distance, beyond a large “ring of steel” security fence. (Leon Neal/Getty Images)
After meeting Queen Elizabeth during his first term, Trump told journalist Piers Morgan that he “was thinking, ‘Can you imagine my mother seeing the scene?'” He went on to describe the queen as “so sharp, so wise, so beautiful.”
The idea, then, is to butter Trump up on Wednesday — and sway him on tariffs and Ukraine on Thursday.
“Keir Starmer has, cleverly in a way, used the king to lure President Trump over here, to give him a very good time,” royal historian Hugo Vickers told the AP. It’s “a wonderful opportunity, with all the goodwill that will be engaged at this point, to talk to him … and [see] if there’s any hope of sorting out Ukraine, etc. This is all a step in the right direction.”
Security concerns
Trump’s state visit will be the biggest protective security operation since Charles’s 2023 coronation, according to British authorities, involving drones, snipers, mounted police and boat teams on the River Thames.
Military personnel in Windsor, England, ahead of the state visit. (Toby Shepheard/AFP via Getty Images)
Preparation “intensified” after last week’s fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, the New York Times reported on Sunday.
“They will be seeking to control every aspect of the space, both in terms of on the ground and in the air,” Simon Morgan, a former Metropolitan Police royalty protection officer, told the Times. “The planners will be reevaluating all the high points to make sure that they’re covered to make sure that there are no gaps — no buildings, no rooftops, no fire escapes where somebody could get a line of sight.”
Police officers carry out security searches in Windsor, England. (Mark Kerrison/In Pictures via Getty Images)
“I’m very content that we have planned a very comprehensive policing and security operation that has taken into consideration just about every eventuality of what could happen,” Assistant Chief Constable Christian Bunt of the Thames Valley Police told reporters on Monday.
