Plans for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee are coming to fruition.
Details of the celebrations are being released in stages. Plans are already under way for street parties, the Queen’s Green Canopy campaign, the Platinum Pudding Competition, and the emblem design that will be used throughout the official festivities.
Here is everything you need to know about the Platinum Jubilee taking place in 2022.
What is the Platinum Jubilee celebration?
The Platinum Jubilee marks 70 years of a monarch’s reign. Queen Elizabeth II will be the first British monarch to reach this milestone.
On significant anniversaries, celebrations take place across the UK and the Commonwealth. This year, street parties will be held, as well as public ceremonies such as the Trooping the Colour, which marks the Queen’s official birthday.
A Platinum Jubilee medal will also be awarded to public service workers, including those in the Armed Forces, emergency services and prison officers.
What date is the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee?
The Platinum Jubilee fell on Sunday, February 6, the date on which the Queen acceded to the throne on the death of her father, George VI, in 1952.
The Queen usually spends the February anniversary, or Accession Day, in private reflection on the Sandringham estate, thinking of her late father. However, for milestone jubilees she is traditionally seen out and about on public engagements.
The Queen’s coronation nevertheless took place on June 2, 1953, at Westminster Abbey in London.
The major Platinum Jubilee celebrations will therefore begin on Thursday, June 2, 2022, and will continue over the weekend until June 5.
What events are planned for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations?
May
From May 12-15, the Platinum Jubilee celebrations will see more than 500 horses and 1,300 performers take part in a 90-minute piece of arena theatre that will include actors, artists, musicians, international military displays, dancers, and global equestrian displays.
The show will take place during the day in the same arena used by the Royal Windsor Horse Show and is the fourth in a series of events at the same venue that have marked significant moments in the life of the Queen.
The event, dubbed ‘A Gallop Through History’, will raise money for charities including those supporting the NHS and key workers. The show will be carried out in front of a live audience of 4,000 but, on the final day (May 15), it will be broadcast live on ITV with Tom Cruise and Alan Titchmarsh joining forces to host, with Dame Helen Mirren appearing as Elizabeth I.
June
Thursday, June 2
The Queen will attend the Trooping the Colour parade. More than 1,400 soldiers, 1,000 dancers and musicians and 500 horses will gather at Buckingham Palace and proceed down The Mall to Horse Guard’s Parade, joined by members of the Royal family on horseback and in carriages.
The event will end with an RAF flypast, watched by the Queen and other royals.
Buckingham Palace has confirmed that the UK’s long-running tradition of celebrating Royal Jubilees, weddings, and coronations with the lighting of beacons will also take place on this day.
Beacons will also be lit in each of the capital cities of Commonwealth nations for the first time ever.
Friday, June 3
A service of thanksgiving will take place at St Paul’s Cathedral.
Saturday, June 4
The Queen and members of her family will attend the Derby at Epsom – the only classic in the flat racing calendar the Queen is yet to win.
The ‘Platinum Party at the Palace’ will take place in the evening, which will be staged and broadcast by the BBC.
Buckingham Palace are yet to name the performers but have said the live concert “will bring together some of the world’s biggest entertainment stars to celebrate the most significant and joyous moments from the Queen’s seven-decade reign”.
Members of the public will be invited to apply to attend via a ballot for UK residents.
Sunday, June 5
People will be encouraged to arrange street parties to join the ‘Big Jubilee Lunch’, before the final event of the weekend, the Platinum Jubilee Pageant.
A lunchtime picnic, ‘The Windsor Big Lunch’, is expected to include the longest-ever run of tables. Organisers said the event, with a privately funded budget of between £10 million and £15 million, is expected to be one of the biggest celebratory events held for decades.
On top of this, organisers of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee are seeking members of the public who have lived through each of her seven decades on the throne to take part in a parade down The Mall to the Palace.
Anyone who has kept the original vintage clothes of their fashion heyday is invited to apply to dress up and walk in the pageant, with a particular call-out for classic cars, motorbikes, and bicycles to recreate 70 years of transport.
Adrian Evans, pageant master, said he hopes to create “exuberance, excitement, spectacle and wow factor”, complete with the “sparkle dust” of Britain’s “national treasures” – actors, writers, artists, and musicians – and members of the public.
“We won’t see the likes of this again,” he said of the Queen’s landmark 70 years on the throne. “We want it to be absolutely awesome for everyone, and particularly for Her Majesty the Queen. We want her to feel we’ve done her proud”.
The pageant will be the centrepiece of the Jubilee bank holiday celebrations, taking place over two-and-a-half hours on the afternoon of June 5. It is not yet clear which events the Queen will attend herself.
Sandringham and Balmoral will also be open for visitors to enjoy the celebrations across the long weekend in June.
July
Three special displays marking significant occasions in the Queen’s reign – the Accession, the Coronation and Jubilees – will be staged at the official royal residences from July 2022.
This is set to include a range of portraits as well as the jewellery and outfits worn for each occasion, housed at Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, and the Palace of Holyroodhouse.
What other information has been announced?
As the date draws closer, further plans have been made for the occasion.
The Queen’s Green Canopy campaign
Members of the public are being encouraged to “Plant a Tree for the Jubilee” as part of a unique planting initiative created to mark Her Majesty’s milestone.
Individuals, villages, schools, businesses, and scout groups are all among those being encouraged to play their part during the planting season between October to March ahead of the official celebrations.
Some 60,000 trees have already been planted.
In February, the National Trust said it would also replant thousands of trees to restore Britain’s lost landscapes in honour of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.
There will be 70 separate projects to mark the milestone, including planting pear trees to restore Rudyard Kipling’s former garden, apple trees at Agatha Christie’s holiday home and 15 poplars to fulfil Harold and Vita Sackville-West’s 1932 vision for a tree avenue at Sissinghurst Castle Garden in Kent.
‘Tree of trees’ sculpture
Echoing Her Majesty’s love for nature, plans have been put in place for a 70ft “tree of trees” to be erected outside Buckingham Palace as the centrepiece of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee weekend. The tree sculpture, designed by Thomas Heatherwick, will feature 350 native British trees, each planted in pots embossed with the Queen’s cypher. At the end of the jubilee celebrations, each pot will be given to a community group across the country as a lasting reminder of their contribution to public life.
Commemorative 50p
In November 2021, the design for a special 50p to mark the occasion was revealed. The coin features a number 70 and incorporates the Queen’s cypher framed within the ‘0’.
The Royal Mint has confirmed the coins will go into circulation later this year – with the design reportedly approved by Her Majesty herself.
It is the first time a royal milestone has been celebrated on the ‘tails’ side of a 50p.
Platinum Pudding Competition
In January 2022, organisers of the Jubilee announced that they were seeking a new national dish to celebrate the occasion – reminiscent of the Coronation Chicken, invented for her Coronation in 1953.
The Platinum Pudding Competition, run by Fortnum & Mason and judged by experts including Dame Mary Berry and the Queen’s own head chef, is open to home cooks aged eight and above.
The winning pudding will be served at The Big Jubilee Lunch, a network of community parties to be held across the country on Sunday, June 5.
Royal family spring world tour
The Royal family has already undertaken a series of overseas tours to mark the Jubilee. The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall visited the Republic of Ireland from March 23 to 25, while the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge went to Belize, Jamaica, and the Bahamas from March 19 to 26.
The Earl and Countess of Wessex had initially planned to visit Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, St Lucia, and St Vincent and the Grenadines from April 22 to 28. There was a last-minute adjustment, however, as they cancelled the visit to Grenada following the Cambridges’ controversial tour of the Caribbean.
The Princess Royal also visited Papua New Guinea from April 11 to 13.
Other events
A ‘Superbloom’ field of flowers will surround the Tower of London, with 20 million seeds being planted in the moat in the spring to be ready to bloom from June to September.
Stamps, coins, souvenir chinaware and Royal Collection exhibitions will also commemorate the occasion, and 39 towns are vying to win Jubilee city status.
A ‘Jubilee Arch’ will also be built at the gateway to the Highland Games arena at the Princess Royal & Duke of Fife Memorial Park, in Braemar, near Balmoral. The Prince of Wales is believed to have approved the design which is set to be in place for the annual Braemar Gathering in September.
Plans have also been confirmed to allow pubs and bars to serve alcohol until 1am on June 2, 3 and 4 as an alteration to the usual 11pm cut off. Home Office minister Kit Malthouse said the extension would allow people to ‘celebrate the longest-reigning monarch in the United Kingdom’.
At an event at Bafta on Tuesday, it was confirmed that Ed Sheeran will lead the musical tributes at the pageant on the Sunday of the extended bank holiday weekend.
Yet with palace sources revealing that the Queen’s attendance at any of the events will only be confirmed on the day, contingency planning has also begun in earnest.
As earlier reported, military chiefs have been drawing up a number of ‘plan Bs’ to ensure the 96-year-old monarch can enjoy the celebrations in honour of her 70-year reign in complete comfort.
This may see HM travelling to Trooping the Colour in a Range Rover with a full Sovereign’s Escort.
This is because she no longer finds carriage rides comfortable – and it is thought she prefers to travel in Range Rovers than lower-to-the-ground state cars these days.
A palace source confirmed that if she does attend the annual birthday parade of pomp and pageantry, then she will almost certainly be seated at the dais rather than standing for any extended periods.
Another matter also thought to be causing consternation behind palace walls is the attendance – or not – of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
Having practically ruled themselves out of making an appearance on the Buckingham Palace balcony over security concerns, a compromise has been reached that could see Harry, Meghan and their children, two-year-old Archie and 10-month-old Lilibet, being offered protection by a Special Escort Group (SEG) detail, which is part of the Metropolitan Police’s royalty protection squad.
That may be enough to allay the Sussexes’ fears. But concerns remain among those close to the Royal family. As one insider put it: “Who does it benefit for the Sussexes to appear on the Buckingham Palace balcony? Only Harry, Meghan, and Netflix. It suggests that they do in fact have the best of both worlds”.
Although the couple could appear at such “family” events as non-working members of the Royal family, they would not be afforded the same status at official events such as the Service of Thanksgiving at St Paul’s Cathedral. This may put them off coming.
But the dilemma highlights what could prove to be an ongoing problem for a family that is also a firm.
How do you protect the monarchy from freelancers, when, in the Queen’s words, whatever they say and whatever they do, they will always remain “much-loved members of the family”?
