If you think wrangling your relatives for the festive season is tricky, spare a thought for King Charles, who’s probably ripped up and redrawn his Christmas dinner seating plan several times this last week alone.
As with many of us, this time of year tends to shine a spotlight on the complicated landscape of the Windsor family dynamics: their internal drama plays out on a very public stage, culminating in a parade for the world’s cameras on the way to church on Christmas morning. That stroll to St. Mary Magdalene, a 16th-century house of worship on the grounds of the royal Sandringham estate, is a tartan-clad festive roll-call of who’s in favour, who’s been banished and who’s making a statement by choosing to decline the invitation.
This year’s guest list at Windsor Christmas is a particularly fraught one: There’s the added of poignancy of this celebration after both the monarch and the Princess of Wales faced down cancer this year, of course, underscored by a rift between Harry and his father and brother that’s stretching into its fifth year, aggravated by a late-breaking scandal from the trouble-prone Prince Andrew.
Grief will no doubt also be at this table. The husband of Lady Gabriella Windsor, part of the extended clan, died by suicide earlier this year. The health challenges faced by Kate and Charles appear to be ongoing: Middleton said in September that despite being finished with chemotherapy, her road to “healing and full recovery is long,” while the King is still actively being treated for his unspecified condition. Princess Anne spent time in hospital for a mysterious head injury earlier this year, while Queen Camilla recently skipped several events due to pneumonia.
All that to say: there’s a lot riding on this year’s annual gathering of the Windsors at Sandringham, the Norfolk estate where they’ve traditionally celebrated the festive season in their own idiosyncratic way. (Wait, you don’t get dressed up in black-tie for Christmas Eve dinner?) Not being there, whether by choice or not, feels like it means something.
Here’s what we know about the royal family plans for Christmas 2025.
1. Will and Kate will likely join King Charles at Sandringham
A week before Christmas Day, the monarch traditionally hosts a “luncheon” for the extended Windsor family in London. Absent from this year’s parade of royals papped driving into Buckingham Palace, the Prince and Princess of Wales apparently skipped it this year because they’d already decamped to their country home for the holidays.
The day of lunch they did, however, release their annual holiday card on social media. Their choice of image looks to be a still taken from the video Kate made announcing she’d completed chemotherapy, showing the family of five squeezed tightly together, arms around each other.
Come Christmas Eve, however, it’s expected that the Wales family will join in the festivities at Sandringham. William, in fact, all but confirmed that earlier this month when he said at an event that he’d be having “lunch with 45 family members this year.” He added that he was looking forward to seeing everyone “all in the same room.”
2. Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson will not attend the family celebration
Prince Andrew’s year of scandals continue. The most recent controversy for the royal family are the allegations that Andrew had become close with Yang Tengbo, an alleged Chinese spy. Per the BBC, a High Court judge ruled that Tengbo had formed an “unusual bond of trust” with the royal, which included receiving an invite to Andrew’s 2020 birthday party. (Tengbo has denied that he is a spy.) This latest reputational headache follows two TV shows that have been made about the disastrous interview Andrew gave in an attempt to address his association with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The fallout, within the family at least, is that Prince Andrew chose to “honourably withdraw” from the family celebration, and will stay at home in Windsor with his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson at the home they still share.
3. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will likely celebrate in California
When it comes to the holiday plans of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, HELLO! magazine reported that the couple will spend the season at their home in California, joined by Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland. The tabloid Express reported that the Sussexes have invited Harry’s cousin Eugenie and her family to join them, with a source claiming that it’s put her in “a very difficult position” because she’s also been invited to Sandringham. (Princess Eugenie was at the lunch the King gave earlier this week.) We do know that the couple released their own holiday card this year, a collage-type design featuring several highlights from their professional lives, plus a family photo that gave a rare (if shot from the back) glimpse of their children, Prince Archie and Princess Lili.
