Royal tour for Australia is CONFIRMED – and it’s just weeks away

Princess Anne will be touring Australia in November with her husband Vice Admiral Sir Tim Laurence.

The tour will travel to New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland for four days from Saturday 8 November until Tuesday 11 November.

‘The Princess Royal will be visiting Australia in her role as Colonel-in-Chief to the Royal Australian Corps of Signals, with the visit marking 100 years since the formation of the Corps,’ a statement from the Australian Governement Defence announcing the official visit read. 

She has been a cornerstone in the King’s slimmed-down working monarchy, and has played a big role by stepping up in support of Charles amid his cancer diagnosis.

The Princess Royal is often regarded as the ‘hardest working’ member of the royal family. Last year, Anne clocked up 474 engagements, with King Charles completing 372.

Anne has two children – Peter Phillips, 47, and Zara Tindall, 44 – from her first marriage to Captain Mark Phillips, before their divorce in 1992. She has been married to Sir Laurence since December that year. 

Princess Anne was last on Australian soil in September 2022 for a short engagement in Sydney, and has been on more than 20 visits to Australia.

The Princess Royal was admitted to intensive care last June with concussion and head injuries after  being kicked by a horse at her Gatcombe Park estate in Gloucestershire.   

She was taken to Southmead Hospital in Bristol for tests, treatment and observation, before returning to duties that July, where she was seen sporting a black eye. 

She carried out her first public engagement in 1969 aged 18 when she opened an educational and training centre in Shropshire, and a year later, she began her longest association with a charity, becoming president of Save the Children and later patron. 

The announcement comes following speculation Prince William and Princess Kate will visit soon after Anthony Albanese invited them to return.

‘I’m certainly hoping there will be one, there’s a standing invitation that the royal family are always welcome in Australia,’ he told News Corp.

‘It was wonderful to welcome King Charles and Queen Camilla to Australia recently, that had a very successful visit and His Majesty is very engaged and I hope that the Prince and Princess of Wales are able to visit as well and we are hopeful that might occur in the coming period.’

It’s understood the royal visit will most likely happen in July or August 2026 to align with the UK summer school holidays, according to Sunrise royal editor Rob Jobson. 

‘The period, I think, is probably going to be the summer of the UK when the kids are not in school,’ he told the program on Monday.

‘I can’t see William and Kate going down to Australia and leaving the kids behind.’

‘Kate hasn’t really done a foreign trip of any significance since 2022. So this is a major trip for her.’

Prince William and Princess Kate last visited Australia in 2014 with their eldest son George, now 12, who was a baby at the time.

The three-week tour included official visits to Sydney, Uluru, and Canberra.

Their younger children Charlotte, 10, and Louis, 7, have never visited Australia.

There were plans for the royals to tour Australia in 2020 to visit communities devastated by the catastrophic Black Summer bushfires in 2019-2020.

However those plans were derailed by the Covid pandemic.

Prince William previously visited Australia in January 2010 and again 14 months later in March 2011 to meet with flood victims in Queensland and Victoria.

His first visit was as a nine-month-old when his parents Prince Charles and Princess Diana toured Australia in 1983.