Cancer Curtailed British Royal Family’s Public Engagements

Europe|Cancer Curtailed U.K. Royal Family’s Exercise of ‘Soft Power’ Through Public Events

The number of public engagements carried out by Britain’s royal family dropped sharply in the year leading up to March 2025, official documents showed, reflecting the effect of the cancer diagnoses of two of its most prominent members, King Charles III and Catherine, the Princess of Wales.

Members of the monarchy undertook more than 1,900 engagements in Britain and abroad in total, according to the sovereign grant report, a yearly accounting document from Buckingham Palace that was published on Monday.

That is significantly fewer than the 2,300 events they attended in the previous year, a number that was well below the 3,200 official engagements managed by Queen Elizabeth II and her family before the coronavirus pandemic.

Despite the health difficulties of senior members of the royal family, the document stressed that the monarchy’s regular routine of outreach and engagements continued. More than 93,000 guests attended 828 events at royal palaces during the 12-month period, it said.

“Soft power is hard to measure, but its value is, I believe, now firmly understood at home and abroad as the core themes of the new reign have come into even sharper focus,” James Chalmers, who has overall responsibility for the management of the monarch’s financial affairs, said in a statement accompanying the sovereign grant report.

King Charles announced in February 2024 that he had received a diagnosis for an undisclosed form of cancer. But he resumed royal duties in May that year and has attended several high-profile events since then. They included a meeting of the heads of government of the Commonwealth in Samoa and, more recently, a two-day visit to Canada, where the king opened Parliament.