It’s a month to go until the culmination of The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee events which will be marked with a special four day UK bank holiday weekend of celebration from Thursday 2nd to Sunday 5th June.
On 6th February this year Her Majesty The Queen became the first British Monarch to celebrate a Platinum Jubilee, marking 70 years of service to the people of the United Kingdom, the Realms and the Commonwealth.
To celebrate this unprecedented anniversary, events and initiatives have been taking place throughout the year.
The bank holiday will provide an opportunity for communities and people throughout the United Kingdom to come together to celebrate the historic milestone. The four days of celebrations will include an exciting array of public events and community activities, as well as national moments of reflection on The Queen’s 70 years of service.
Thursday 2nd June
The Queen’s Birthday Parade (Trooping the Colour)
The Queen’s Birthday Parade will be held on Thursday 2nd June 2022 starting at 10am. The colour will be trooped by the 1st Battalion, Irish Guards, and more than 1200 officers and soldiers from the Household Division will put on a display of military pageantry on Horse Guards Parade, together with hundreds of Army musicians and around 240 horses. This annual event has now marked the official birthday of the British Sovereign for over 260 years.
During The Queen’s Birthday Parade A Royal Gun Salute will be fired.
There is an opportunity for people to view the display along The Mall as the troops parade to and from Horse Guards Parade on its journey between Buckingham Palace and the parade ground.
During the ceremony, there will be an opportunity to watch the event on a large screen at St James’s Park and many more members of the public will be able to watch the spectacle live on television, across the world. Once the parade has ended and the Royal Procession has returned to Buckingham Palace, the Royal Family’s balcony appearance will happen as in previous years.
Platinum Jubilee Flypast
There will be an impressive Flypast to coincide with the Royal Family’s balcony appearance. More details will be announced in due course.
Platinum Jubilee Beacons
On Thursday 2nd June, over 2000 towns, villages and cities throughout the UK, Channel Islands, Isle of Man and UK Overseas Territories will come together to light a beacon to mark the Jubilee. Beacons will also be lit in each of the capital cities of Commonwealth countries.
The principal beacon lighting will take place in a special ceremony at Buckingham Palace on Thursday evening. This will take the form of a lighting installation with The Queen’s Green Canopy ‘Tree of Trees’ sculpture and projections onto the front of Buckingham Palace. This innovative new way of taking part in the beacon lighting will reflect the Royal Family's long history of championing environmental causes.
Friday 3rd June
National Service of Thanksgiving
A Service of Thanksgiving for The Queen’s reign will be held at St Paul’s Cathedral. Great Paul, the largest church bell in the country, will be rung for the Service. It was made in 1882, but fell silent in the 1970s due to a broken mechanism. It was restored in 2021 and has been rung on 8 occasions since, but this is the 1st Royal occasion for which it will be rung.
The service will include a new Anthem by Judith Weir, Master of The Queen’s Music, that sets to music words from the third Chapter of the Book of Proverbs.
Further details of the Service of Thanksgiving will be announced in due course.
Saturday 4th June
The Derby – Epsom Downs Racecourse
As part of the central weekend celebrations, Epsom Downs Racecourse will stage the 243rd running of The Derby.
BBC Platinum Party at the Palace
Hosts Kirsty Young and Roman Kemp, will lead live coverage of the Platinum Party at the Palace to be shown air live on BBC One, BBC iPlayer and across the BBC. The celebration will see famous faces from the world of entertainment brought together to perform for a night of musical tributes to celebrate the Jubilee. 22,000 people will attend the event including 10,000 allocated in a public ballot and 5,000 tickets for key workers. And now for the first time, the BBC have released artist visuals of the impressive setting and stage where the acts will perform. The full line-up of acts will be announced by the BBC in the coming weeks.
Sunday 5th June
The Big Jubilee Lunch
Over 60,000 people have registered to host Big Jubilee Lunches on over the central weekend, with events ranging from world record attempts for the longest street party to back garden BBQ’s and everything in between. As millions of people across the UK sit down to share lunch in their communities, a flagship event will be taking place at The Oval in London where a specially invited audience will share friendship, food and fun together with entertainment at the iconic venue. People are joining in across the world with over 600 international Big Jubilee Lunches being planned throughout the Commonwealth and beyond - from Canada to Brazil, New Zealand to Japan and South Africa to Switzerland.
The Platinum Jubilee Pageant
Evoking the Coronation at the very start of the Platinum Pageant, the Bells of Westminster Abbey will chime, as they did on Coronation Day. As they do so, The Mounted Band of the Household Cavalry will lead The Gold State Coach along a crowd-thronged pageant route back to Buckingham Palace.
The Gold State Coach is used to transport the Monarch on the occasion of their Coronation and Jubilees, and it has not been seen in on the streets of London for twenty years.
The Gold State Coach is the Platinum Pageant’s iconic figurehead; a ‘crown jewel’ made yet more awesome by the glittering livery worn by its four pairs of Windsor Greys. Everywhere you look, in the golden sculptures and painted panels, in the uniforms of the postillions, grooms, footmen, attendants and mounted guards, there is rich tradition and history.
At the Platinum Pageant, The Gold State Coach plays a remarkable role. Original film footage recorded on Coronation Day will be used to recreate the magic of that extraordinary occasion.
The Pageant will serve as an opportunity to gather and pay tribute to Her Majesty. It will culminate with the singing of the National Anthem, ‘God Save the Queen’. A gospel choir will join the Band of Her Majesty’s Royal Marines.
The Pageant itself will bring to life iconic moments from The Queen’s reign as well as showcasing our changing society over the past 70 years.
10,000 people are involved, including the military, over 6,000 volunteers, performers, key workers and 2,500 members of the public.
National treasures and iconic figures from music, film, sport and the arts will take part in the Pageant including much-loved celebrity names, alongside military personnel, key workers and volunteers.
thebigjubileelunch.com is still accepting orders for free packs to get street parties started or for people to find out where a public event in their area may be taking place.
The Armed Forces will also take a leading role in the Platinum Jubilee Pageant on Sunday 5th June. Around 1,800 members of Armed Forces personnel, representing the Royal Navy, Royal Marines, British Army and Royal Air Force, will lead Act 1 of the pageant. Six military bands will form part of the military contingent and the Armed Forces of the United Kingdom will be joined representatives from the Armed Forces of Commonwealth nations. The military section of the pageant will involve personnel from regiments and units across the Union, including those with a special relationship with The Queen.
Further information
The Royal Collection Trust
A special Platinum Jubilee T-shirt designed by artist, author and illustrator Charlie Mackesy will go on sale next week. Author of beloved book, ‘The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse’, the T-shirt artwork features the boy and the mole along with a heart-shaped Union Jack and the words ‘Thank you Ma’am’ in recognition of the dedication and service of Her Majesty. (Images available). It will be available online from the Royal Collection Trust shop website and Royal Collection Trust Shops in London, Windsor and Edinburgh from 12 May and can be bought in the Royal Parks over the Central Weekend.
Royal residences will stage three special displays marking significant occasions in Her Majesty’s reign – the Accession, the Coronation and Jubilees – from July 2022.
At the Summer Opening of the State Rooms at Buckingham Palace, portraits of The Queen taken by photographer Dorothy Wilding between 1952 and 1956 will be on display, alongside items of Her Majesty’s personal jewellery worn for the sittings. At Windsor Castle, the Coronation Dress and Robe of Estate worn by The Queen for her Coronation at Westminster Abbey on 2 June 1953 will be on display, while at the Palace of Holyroodhouse, visitors will see outfits worn by Her Majesty on occasions to celebrate the Silver, Golden and Diamond Jubilees.
Royal Windsor Horse Show and The Platinum Jubilee Celebration
From 12th -15th May the Royal Windsor Horse Show will start the unofficial Jubilee celebrations.
In the same arena as the RWHS, each evening a Platinum Jubilee Celebration will see over 500 horses and 1,000 performers create a 90-minute piece of arena theatre that will include actors and artists, musicians, international military displays, dancers and global equestrian displays. The production will take the audience on a gallop through history from Elizabeth I to the present day.
The Platinum Pudding competition
To mark Her Majesty’s Platinum Jubilee a nationwide baking competition set out to find a brand new pudding dedicated to The Queen. The winning recipe will be unveiled during an hour-long BBC One programme, The Jubilee Pudding: 70 Years in the Baking, which airs on May 12 at 8pm and charts Fortnum & Mason’s competition to find “an original and celebratory cake, tart or pudding fit for The Queen”.
The winning recipe will be made available to the public and the pudding will be enjoyed at Big Jubilee Lunches during the Jubilee weekend, and by generations to come.
The Queen’s Green Canopy (QGC)
The Queen’s Green Canopy project has so far seen over one million trees planted in the UK during the first planting season, which ran from October 2021 until March 2022. Communities and cities from Cornwall to Glasgow have come together to “plant a tree for the Jubilee” as a celebration of The Queen’s 70 years of service to the nation and the Commonwealth.
Every planting so far has been recorded on a digital Queen’s Green Canopy map, which will be presented to Her Majesty at the end of the Jubilee year. Most recently, The Prince of Wales, as QGC Patron, has unveiled a nationwide network of 70 Ancient Woodlands and 70 Ancient Trees to be dedicated to Her Majesty. The QGC has also launched a special training programme to teach unemployed young people new skills in tree planting and management, as well as a Young Foresters Award to highlight the value of trees to school children.
As a centrepiece of The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee weekend celebrations in June, a spectacular 21-metre “Tree of Trees” sculpture featuring 350 British native trees will be created outside Buckingham Palace. Designed by Thomas Heatherwick, the sculpture seeks to put the importance of trees and nature at the heart of this historic milestone to celebrate Her Majesty, who has planted over 1,500 trees all over the world throughout the course of her 70-year reign. The 350 trees will be set in aluminium pots embossed with Her Majesty’s cypher. After the Jubilee weekend, the trees will be gifted to selected community groups and organisations to celebrate their work and inspire the next generation of tree planters across the nation. The trees will be carefully stored during the summer ahead of distribution at the start of the planting season in October.
Travel updates for the weekend
TFL have published a dedicated travel advice webpage for the Platinum Jubilee.
The initial webpage contains top-level, pan-London travel advice for the celebrations, and more detail will be added e.g. specific road closures as the weekend approaches.
https://tfl.gov.uk/platinum-jubilee
