King Charles's autumn tour announcement makes one thing crystal clear - could it be the start of a new royal travel tradition?
He and Queen Camilla are heading to the Caribbean in October but his schedule also includes some important visits without her
The King is still on holiday at Balmoral but work never stops when you're monarch and plans for a major overseas tour in the autumn have just been confirmed. Buckingham Palace announced that King Charles and Queen Camilla will undertake a royal visit to Antigua and Barbuda in October before attending the 2026 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.
This will be the couple's first overseas trip since the US State Visit in April and it looks like His Majesty has started an intriguing new travel tradition. Like last time, Charles's schedule includes solo visits to other nations - in this case The Bahamas and Guyana.
The monarch will be kicking off the tour in The Bahamas and according to the official announcement, it will just be him. He will then head to Guyana "at the invitation of the President" and "at the request of the UK Government".
King Charles is the Head of State of The Bahamas and in Guyana he'll be helping celebrate 60 years of bilateral relations between them and the UK. It's interesting that Queen Camilla won't be by his side for these important visits and she didn't go with him to Bermuda after four days in the US.
Now this split schedule has happened again, it's beginning to look like a new custom for Charles and it's possible that there are logistical reasons for this. Perhaps the Queen has other prior commitments to patronages or organisations in the days he'll be in The Bahamas and Guyana.
However, it could also be a subtle move to make these trips a little less official and more personal. The last time the royals visited The Bahamas was when the Prince and Princess of Wales went on their Caribbean Tour in 2022.
The tour in general attracted considerable criticism, especially when the couple rode in in the same Land Rover in Jamaica that the Queen and Prince Philip used in 1953. King Charles will no doubt want his first visits to The Bahamas and Guyana as monarch to be seen very differently.
Going on his own is always going to be low-key than if both the King and Queen were there and he can solely focus his attention on his engagements and strengthening his relationships with these two Commonwealth nations. It also isn't going to draw as many direct comparisons between his visit and those of the other two royal couples in the past/
Queen Camilla is Queen Consort of several Commonwealth Realms but does not have a formal constitutional role in the Commonwealth like her husband, so her presence for all of the tour isn't as crucial.
She'll join King Charles to visit Antigua and Barbuda and attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, so she'll still be involved and representing the monarchy.
The full royal tour is planned for 27th October-4th November and the palace said it will "celebrate the communities, cultures and nature within the Commonwealth family". It'll be the first time the monarch has visited the Caribbean since he went to Barbados in 2021, when they officially removed Queen Elizabeth as its Head of State.
In a speech as Prince of Wales, Charles acknowledged the "appalling atrocity of slavery, which forever stains our history".
