The Royal Christmas Card Through the Years: Who Made the Cut
Not every grandchild makes the front of the card every year: what the family's annual Christmas photo choices have quietly said about who's in and who's out.
Somewhere between a family snapshot and a small piece of public communication, the royal Christmas card has quietly documented decades of royal life, one carefully chosen photograph at a time. The stationery and the sending are one story. What actually appears on the card is a different one, and it’s often more revealing than it looks.
The earliest cards
The tradition of royal Christmas cards stretches back further than most people assume: the Royal Collection Trust holds handmade cards from Queen Victoria’s own children. The modern version, a single chosen family photograph sent out as an official card, took shape later, under King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, and has continued in that basic format ever since.
1942: a princess and the Guards
One of the most striking early cards came during the Second World War, in 1942, when a 16-year-old Princess Elizabeth, the future Queen Elizabeth II, appeared in a card sent specifically to the Grenadier Guards. It’s a small, human detail from the middle of a war: a teenage future monarch, already understanding that a photograph could carry a message of its own.
The Wales years: children stealing the show
Through the 1980s, Diana and Charles’s Christmas cards charted their young family in real time. The 1986 card included the family’s dog alongside the group; by 1987, a card of the Prince and Princess of Wales with young William and Harry was, by most accounts, stolen entirely by the boys’ grins. These cards did what royal Christmas cards do best: turning a formal institution into a recognisably ordinary family, for one photograph a year.
1989: back to formality
Not every card reached for informality. Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip’s 1989 card was traditional black-and-white formal portraiture, a reminder that the “family snapshot” style was always a choice, not the only available register, and that the Queen’s own cards could swing between warmth and formality depending on the year.
2020: hay bales and four generations of style
More recently, the Wales’s 2020 card, showing William, Kate, George, Charlotte and Louis photographed sitting on hay bales with cut logs behind them, leaned fully into rustic, unstaged-looking charm, a world away from 1989’s formal black-and-white. It’s a useful marker of how far the genre’s visual language has moved: today’s cards are shot to look almost candid, even when they’re carefully composed.
Charles and Camilla’s recent choices
King Charles and Queen Camilla’s cards since his accession have often reached backward rather than forward for their image. The 2024 card used a portrait taken by photographer Millie Pilkington in the garden at Buckingham Palace back in April that year, with Camilla in a blue wool crepe dress. The 2025 card went further back still, choosing a photograph from their 20th wedding anniversary, taken in the gardens of Villa Wolkonsky in Rome during their April 2025 state visit to Italy; Camilla wore a white-and-beige coat dress with a lily-of-the-valley brooch, and Charles a striped blue suit.
Choosing an anniversary photograph, rather than a purpose-shot Christmas portrait, is itself a small statement: the card as a chosen keepsake from the year, not a staged obligation.
Continuing the tradition outside the institution
Even after stepping back as senior working royals, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have kept up their own annual Christmas card, a detail that says something about how deeply embedded the custom is: it has outlasted formal royal duties entirely, continuing as a personal tradition independent of any official role.
The photographers behind the lens
Look closely at the credits on decades of royal Christmas cards and a handful of names recur. Cecil Beaton, who photographed the coronation and countless official portraits from the 1930s onward, shaped how the mid-century royal family was seen at Christmas as much as on any state occasion. Patrick Lichfield, the Queen’s own cousin, brought a more relaxed, family-album quality to the portraits he took of her from the 1970s. Norman Parkinson did similar work for the wider family, catching the Windsors somewhere between formal sitting and candid snapshot.
That pattern has continued into the current generation. Millie Pilkington, who took King Charles and Queen Camilla’s 2024 card, has become one of the more regularly credited royal photographers of recent years, while Chris Allerton has produced much of the Wales family’s more relaxed outdoor imagery, including the hay-bale portrait from 2020. The names change with the decades, but the underlying job stays the same: turning a private family moment into an image the whole country will study for clues.
From a private keepsake to a public reveal
For most of the tradition’s history, the Christmas card was exactly that: a card, posted to a fixed list of recipients, and seen by almost no one else until decades later when the Royal Collection Trust or a biography brought it back into view. Today, the same photograph usually does double duty. Kensington Palace, Clarence House and Buckingham Palace now post the chosen image to their official social media accounts, typically in the run-up to Christmas, so millions see it within minutes of release rather than waiting for a card to land on a doormat.
That shift has changed what the choice of photograph is really doing. A picture that once quietly signalled family news to a few hundred courtiers, ambassadors and friends is now scrutinised in real time by a global audience of royal-watchers, who read hairstyles, outfits and who’s standing where with the same intensity once reserved for a state portrait. The card hasn’t changed its basic job, but the size of the audience watching it has grown well beyond anything Queen Victoria’s children could have imagined when they first put pen and paint to their own handmade versions.
What the choices actually say
Read across enough years, the royal Christmas card turns into a quiet, low-stakes record of who’s currently close, who’s growing up, and how formal or relaxed the family wants to appear that particular December. It’s a far smaller decision than most royal choices, and precisely because of that, it tends to say more than it means to.
Browse more of our Royal Figures stories for the personalities behind the institution.
Frequently asked questions
When did the royal Christmas card tradition begin?
Handmade Christmas cards from Queen Victoria’s children exist in the Royal Collection Trust, but the modern tradition of a single official family photograph sent as a Christmas card took shape later, under King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.
What was notable about the 1942 royal Christmas card?
A 16-year-old Princess Elizabeth, the future Queen Elizabeth II, appeared in a 1942 Christmas card sent specifically to the Grenadier Guards during the Second World War.
What photo did King Charles and Camilla use for their 2025 Christmas card?
They chose a photograph from their 20th wedding anniversary, taken in the gardens of Villa Wolkonsky in Rome during their April 2025 state visit to Italy.
Do Harry and Meghan still send a royal Christmas card?
Yes. Despite stepping back as senior working royals, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have continued to release their own annual Christmas card.
Did royal Christmas cards used to be more formal?
Yes, at times. Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip’s 1989 card, for example, used traditional black-and-white formal portraiture, in contrast with the more relaxed, candid-style photography favoured by some recent cards.
Whose children appeared in the William and Kate 2020 Christmas card?
Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis appeared with their parents, photographed sitting on hay bales with cut logs in the background.
Who takes the photographs used on royal Christmas cards?
Over the decades, several well-known royal and society photographers have been credited with the images, including Cecil Beaton, Patrick Lichfield and Norman Parkinson in earlier generations, and more recently photographers such as Millie Pilkington and Chris Allerton.
Are royal Christmas cards shared publicly today?
Yes. Where the tradition was once limited to a printed card sent to a fixed list of recipients, the royal households now typically post the chosen photograph to their official social media accounts in the run-up to Christmas, so the image reaches a global audience almost immediately.
Details of past royal Christmas cards are drawn from widely published royal reporting and the Royal Collection Trust; described as of 2026.
