London's royal year, and where to stand for it

The royal ceremony you can catch almost any week of the year is the Changing of the King's Life Guard on Horse Guards Parade, at 11am every day (10am on Sundays), with no ticket and a far thinner crowd than at Buckingham Palace. The bigger royal events in London follow an annual calendar, and most of them reward a bit of planning.

The Guard, at the Palace and Horse Guards

The Guard changes in the Buckingham Palace forecourt at 11am, but not every day. For most of the year it's Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays, more often in summer, and the Household Division publishes the schedule a month or so ahead. It gets cancelled in very wet weather or for state events, so check the calendar the morning you go.

To see anything at all, be there by 10.15am, on the Victoria Memorial steps or along the railings. Most people do better to skip the forecourt and watch the new guard march down Birdcage Walk from Wellington Barracks at about 10.45am, band playing, with the soldiers at arm's length instead of behind two sets of railings. The Guards Museum at Wellington Barracks, on the same stretch of Birdcage Walk, explains the regiments, the uniforms and why the bearskins are the height they are, and an hour there is about right.

Over at Horse Guards in Whitehall, the Household Cavalry mount the King's Life Guard every day. The handover on the parade ground takes about half an hour, and the two mounted sentries on Whitehall itself change on the hour all day. At 4pm there's a short dismounted inspection, known locally as the four o'clock parade, which few tourists know about. The Household Cavalry Museum is in the same building, and from its windows you can see straight into the working stables.

Summer: Trooping the Colour and the Palace

The King's Birthday Parade (everyone still calls it Trooping the Colour) happens on a Saturday in June. More than a thousand soldiers, the massed bands and several hundred horses parade on Horse Guards, the royal family ride or drive down the Mall, and it all ends with the RAF flypast over Buckingham Palace, watched from the balcony.

Seats in the stands go by public ballot, which opens early in the year, and so do seats for the two full-dress rehearsals on the Saturdays before, the Major General's Review and the Colonel's Review. They're almost identical to the real thing and much easier to get into. Without a ticket, stand on the Mall; get there by 9am for a front spot and bring water, because a June morning on the tarmac gets warmer than you'd think.

On two or three summer evenings, usually in June, the massed bands of the Household Division perform Beating Retreat on Horse Guards Parade, and some years the Royal Marines put on their own: open-air military music, drill and pipes as the sun goes down. Tickets are on general sale but sell out, so book when they go on sale in the spring.

The State Rooms at Buckingham Palace open to visitors in summer while the King is in Scotland; in 2026, from 9 July to 27 September. Timed tickets for August weekends sell out, so book when the summer dates are announced in spring. The Royal Mews, the working stables where the Gold State Coach lives, is round the corner on Buckingham Palace Road and keeps a longer season, which makes it the easier palace visit outside summer.

Salutes, the Keys and the autumn ceremonies

Royal gun salutes are fired for the King's birthday, his official birthday in June, the State Opening of Parliament and other royal anniversaries. The King's Troop Royal Horse Artillery gallop their First World War-era guns into Hyde Park or Green Park and fire 41 rounds at noon, and the Honourable Artillery Company fire 62 from the Tower of London at 1pm. The Royal Parks list the dates. Go for Hyde Park, fired near the Dorchester, if you can, because you see the horses.

Every night at 9.30pm the Yeoman Warders lock up the Tower of London, as they have for centuries, in the Ceremony of the Keys. It lasts about half an hour. Tickets are free, released through Historic Royal Palaces, and they vanish within minutes, so note the release date and be online the moment they appear. Latecomers aren't let in, and photos aren't allowed.

The State Opening of Parliament has no fixed date. It comes at the start of each new session, and the procession between the Palace and Westminster is free to watch from Whitehall and Parliament Square. Remembrance Sunday, the second Sunday in November, brings the national service at the Cenotaph on Whitehall, and the Lord Mayor's Show (not royal, but every bit as ceremonial) processes through the City of London on the second Saturday of November.

All of these close roads and Tube exits around Westminster and St James's. Stay in Victoria, Westminster or St James's and you can walk to any of them; leave early, and plan to come back on foot too, since the Mall and Whitehall stay shut until the crowds clear. Afterwards, The Goring, a few minutes from the Palace, does afternoon tea on its Veranda looking over the hotel garden, and for the afternoon of Trooping the Colour it needs booking weeks ahead.

London weather by month

July is the warmest month, averaging 23°C by day. July has the fewest wet days (9) and October the most rain (80 mm). For sightseeing on foot, June scores best on our combined warmth-and-dryness measure.

Month	Avg high	Avg low	Rain	Wet days	Chance a 7-day stay sees a washout	Record high / low
January	8°C	2°C	74 mm	13	53%	16°C / -12°C
February	8°C	2°C	51 mm	10	43%	18°C / -8°C
March	11°C	4°C	45 mm	9	44%	23°C / -7°C
April	14°C	5°C	54 mm	10	44%	26°C / -3°C
May	17°C	8°C	54 mm	9	39%	30°C / -1°C
June	20°C	11°C	58 mm	9	35%	34°C / 2°C
July	23°C	13°C	52 mm	9	34%	34°C / 4°C
August	22°C	13°C	68 mm	9	37%	37°C / 4°C
September	19°C	11°C	62 mm	9	39%	29°C / 2°C
October	15°C	8°C	80 mm	11	47%	27°C / -2°C
November	11°C	5°C	76 mm	12	52%	18°C / -6°C
December	8°C	2°C	69 mm	12	50%	16°C / -8°C

Calculated NOAA GHCN-Daily observations at the Hampstead weather station, north London (records 1960–2015; averages from about 25 years per month). A wet day has 1 mm of rain or more.