TROOPING THE COLOUR

Trooping the Colour is the King’s Birthday Parade: a Saturday morning in June on Horse Guards Parade, in Whitehall, when the Household Division parades before the Sovereign and one battalion of Foot Guards carries its Colour through the ranks. More than fourteen hundred soldiers, two hundred horses and four hundred musicians take part.

It has nothing to do with the King’s birthday, which is in November. Edward VII, who was also born in November, kept it in the summer for the weather.

The Colour

A regiment’s Colour is its flag. It was once the rallying point in battle, and soldiers had to know it on sight, so young officers carried it between the ranks, held high. That is the trooping.

The Foot Guards have guarded the Sovereign since the Restoration in 1660, and the ceremony is believed to date from the reign of Charles II. In 1748 it was chosen to mark the Sovereign’s official birthday, and from 1760, under George III, it was held every year. Its present form was settled in 1889.

Queen Victoria came to it once, in 1895, at Windsor. Elizabeth II missed it only in 1955, when a rail strike cancelled it, and rode to it on her mare Burmese from 1969 to 1986.

The Parade

The King comes down the Mall from Buckingham Palace with the Household Cavalry as his escort, takes a royal salute on Horse Guards and inspects his troops, while the King’s Troop fires forty-one guns in Green Park.

The massed bands then troop in slow and quick time, and turn in a manoeuvre found in no drill book, the spin-wheel, in which some four hundred musicians pivot on their own centre.

A lone drummer beats the call. The Regimental Sergeant-Major draws his sword to hand over the Colour, the only time an infantry warrant officer draws one on parade, and the Colour is carried slowly down the ranks to the Grenadiers’ Slow March.

Some 113 words of command are given, from the saddle, by the Field Officer in Brigade Waiting.

The Guards march past in slow and quick time, the King’s Troop and the Household Cavalry ride past at the walk and the trot, and the King leads his Guards back to the Palace. At one o’clock the Royal Air Force flies over, and the royal family watches from the balcony.

In 2026 the Colour trooped was that of the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, in the regiment’s three hundred and seventieth year.

What to Know

It is held on a Saturday in June, from about ten in the morning. The whole parade is rehearsed on the two Saturdays before, as the Major General’s Review and the Colonel’s Review.

Seats in the stands for the Birthday Parade are allotted by ballot, which opens early in the year. Seats for the two reviews are sold.

Morning dress. The Household Division asks for morning dress or a lounge suit in the stands, and the Court takes the higher. Hats are recommended, for paying compliments to the King and the Colour as they pass. Umbrellas and parasols are not allowed.

Without a seat, stand on the Mall or at the edge of St James’s Park from nine.

No cars are allowed near Horse Guards, and everyone walks in. St James’s, a short walk away, is where to stay.

The mistake is to leave when the parade leaves Horse Guards. The flypast comes over the Palace at one o’clock.

The Court

Trooping the Colour is not the Court’s own. Seats in the stands are allotted by ballot, so they are applied for on a member’s behalf, with the Colonel’s Review the week before to fall back on, and the Court arranges the whole of it: getting there, where to stay in St James’s, and the table afterward. Royal Ascot follows the week after, for a member who wants both.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.