State visits and The Gazette: Part 1 - Introduction
Following the state visit of the American president earlier this year, historian and honours expert Russell Malloch looks at the recent history of state visits in the UK, including The Gazette’s reporting of events.
President in town
The role of the state visit in international affairs came into focus in September and October of 2025, with the arrival of the American president and Mrs Trump in the United Kingdom, and the reception of King Charles III and Queen Camilla by Pope Leo XIV in Rome.
Donald Trump’s visit followed the acceptance of an invitation contained in a letter that was delivered by the prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, at the White House in Washington in February 2025. In his letter, the King discussed the possibility of less formal meetings being held at his residences at Balmoral Castle or Dumfries House in Scotland, before he wrote:
“Quite apart from this presenting an opportunity to discuss a wide range of issues of mutual interest, it would also offer a valuable chance to plan a historic second state visit to the United Kingdom. As you will know, this is unprecedented by a U.S. president. That is why I would find it helpful for us to be able to discuss, together, a range of options for location and programme content. In so doing, working together, I know we will further enhance the special relationship between our two countries, of which we are both so proud.”
This series of article examines the “location and programme content” aspect of the King’s letter to President Trump, who was asked to take part in an “inward” or “inbound” state visit, and in doing so would follow in the steps of around 150 emperors, kings, queens and presidents who arrived since the modern system of diplomatic exchanges began during the reign of King Edward VII at the start of the 20th century.
In the same period, around 120 “outward” or “outbound” events were organised, when the sovereign paid state visits to foreign states, including the United States of America and the Holy See.
What is a state visit?
There is no statutory definition of what constitutes a state visit, but it is generally regarded as involving a meeting of two heads of state that is of a ceremonial nature, and is characterised by:
- the presence of formal welcomes with gun salutes and guards of honour
- carriage processions with military escorts
- royal and civic banquets
- the exchange of honours
- the presence of foreign ministers and high officials in attendance
It is one of the nation’s main ceremonial events, along with occasions such as the state opening of parliament at Westminster, and the Garter service at Windsor. The Gazette has noticed a few aspects of the state visit process since the Edwardian period, while accounts have been published in the Court Circular over the same period.
These articles describe inward visits, while outward visits are only mentioned to highlight some of the points of contrast and comparison that exist.
Sequence of visits
The decision to hold a state visit usually lay with the government of the relevant nations and may involve the expectation of a reciprocal visit for the sovereign and the foreign head of state.
The only exception to the arrangement being limited to a head of state arose in 1921 when the Lloyd George government authorised the use of the ceremonial machinery for Crown Prince Hirohito of Japan, the son of Emperor Yoshihito, as no Japanese ruler had set foot on foreign soil until 1971 (when Hirohito, now emperor, landed in Alaska, where he met the American president Richard Nixon, before continuing on to Europe for state visits to Denmark and Belgium before London).
In the United Kingdom, the procedure usually began with an invitation to the foreign head of state to visit the sovereign and their consort, and so during Elizabeth II’s reign the invite was for the monarch or president to visit the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, until Prince Philip withdrew from public engagements in 2017.
The first decade of the 20th century provides the starting point in terms of understanding the modern sequence of state visits. The process began when Edward VII visited Lisbon, Rome and Paris during the spring of 1903 (Gazette issue 27560), and in return entertained the French president in London, and the Italian and Portuguese kings at Windsor. Before 1910 the normal sequence was for reciprocal visits, with Edward always acting as host in England and guest abroad.
The policy evolved during George V’s reign, and in the years after the end of the first world war the sovereign did not pay, and nor was he expected to pay, a return state visit to countries such as Egypt, Japan and the United States of America whose kings, princes and presidents were welcomed in the United Kingdom in the 1920s.
No state visits were organised in Edward VIII’s short reign, while the imbalance that was evident during George V’s reign was also present under George VI, whose reign was effectively cut in two by the second world war, and only reciprocated one inward state visit, as he travelled to Paris in 1939 to repay the hospitality of the French president Albert Lebrun one year earlier. The King also travelled in state as the guest of the American president Theodore Roosevelt in 1939, but did not live long enough to welcome Roosevelt or his successor, Harry Truman, to the United Kingdom before his early death in 1952.
State visits during the reign of Queen Elizabeth II
The sequence of state visits varied during Elizabeth II’s long reign, with half having no return leg. In some cases, the hospitality was reciprocated, with almost 30 of the inward visits taking place before the Queen visited the foreign nation.
The table below shows examples of inward before outward visits from several decades of her reign:
|
Head of state |
Visit to Queen |
Visit by Queen |
|
Haile Selassie of Ethiopia |
1954 |
1965 |
|
Francisco Lopes of Portugal |
1955 |
1957 |
|
Margrethe II of Denmark |
1974 |
1979 |
|
Francois Mitterrand of France |
1984 |
1992 |
|
Lech Walesa of Poland |
1991 |
1996 |
|
George Bush of the USA |
2003 |
2007 |
A similar analysis of around 25 outward before inward events is shown below:
|
Head of State |
Visit by Queen |
Visit to Queen |
|
Juliana of the Netherlands |
1958 |
1972 |
|
William Tubman of Liberia |
1961 |
1962 |
|
Hastings Banda of Malawi |
1979 |
1985 |
|
Hassan II of Morocco |
1980 |
1987 |
|
Nelson Mandela of South Africa |
1995 |
1996 |
|
Carlo Ciampi of Italy |
2000 |
2005 |
The tables show that the variable sequence applied to both monarchies and republics, and that the timing of a return ranged from less than a year for the president of Liberia, to more than a decade for the queen of the Netherlands.
No return visits arose on more than 50 occasions during Elizabeth II’s reign, often because of political changes that rendered a return visit inadvisable, or impossible because of the demise of the sovereign in 2022. Some presidents held office for a fixed term, and so it was not practical for a return visit to take place before they ceased being the head of state, and on several occasions a return visit was organised by one of their successors as the head of state, as the process operated at the level of the state, rather than the individual.
Such a situation arose with the United States of America, as the Queen was welcomed by Dwight Eisenhower in 1957, Gerald Ford in 1976 and George Bush in 1991, but there were no return visits to the United Kingdom for presidents such as John Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter. In practice, and despite the special relationship that was referred to in the King’s letter to President Trump, no American leader paid a state visit to the United Kingdom from Woodrow Wilson in 1918 until the arrival of George W. Bush in 2003. He was then followed by Barack Obama in 2011 and Donald Trump in 2019, but without any intervening visits to or from Bill Clinton and Joe Biden.
The demise of the crown in 2022 rendered a return visit impossible for several heads of state, and so no reciprocal trip was organised for the Queen to stay with Michael Higgins of Ireland, or the kings of Spain and the Netherlands, or Donald Trump in the United States, to return the hospitality she laid on in the 2010s.
Other considerations worked against some return visits. One obvious reason was the forced removal of the individual as head of state, as happened when the King of Afghanistan was overthrown in 1973, and so was unable to reciprocate his visit to the Queen in 1971. Similarly, General Gowon of Nigeria came to the United Kingdom in 1973, but lost power in a military coup, and later fled to England where he made his home. A few leaders were assassinated before they could welcome the Queen, as with Faisal of Iraq who was killed during the 1958 revolution, Faisal of Saudi Arabia who was murdered by a relative in 1975, and Nicolae Ceausescu who was executed after he lost control in Romania in 1989.
Return visits became unlikely because of the altered political relations between certain nations, as with Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China, who were entertained by the British government in 2003 and 2015, but are unlikely candidates for a state visit to King Charles, at least while the war in Ukraine is still in progress.
There were some notable imbalances in the provision of hospitality, as Presidents Gowon, Shagari and Babangida of Nigeria came to England in 1973, 1981 and 1989, but without any return visit to west Africa, and Presidents Geisel, Cardoso and Silva of Brazil were entertained by the Queen in 1976, 1997 and 2006, but without her ever being received in Brazil. Similar “inward but no outward” programmes arose with Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping of China who came to London between 1999 and 2015, but without any repeat of the Queen’s trip to meet Li Xiannian in 1986. A similar one-way traffic characterised the invitations to the kings of Saudi Arabia.
As regards the presidents who did not return the compliment, the list included Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya and Josip Tito of Yugoslavia from the 1970s, and more recently Boris Yeltsin of Russia, Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic and Mary McAleese of Ireland, along with the presidents of the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Foreign comparisons
The state visit formed part of the diplomatic machinery that was used by many nations around the world, as they organised bilateral engagements that were similar in many respects to the form and function of the core programme for visits to London or Windsor.
In the United States of America in 1994, for example, Bill Clinton received state visits from Emperor Akihito of Japan, Leonid Kuchma of Ukraine, Nelson Mandela of South Africa and Borin Yeltsin of Russia, while Emmanuel Macron of France was welcomed in state by Donald Trump in 2018, and by Joe Biden in 2022.
Three notable omissions from the list of state visit guests are Australia, Canada and New Zealand. This reflects a continuing colonial legacy, under which the same individual is the head of state of the United Kingdom nation and several other countries, and has the effect of excluding three of the most substantial members of the Commonwealth from being invited to take part in the state visit circuit.
The anomalous colonial situation was addressed to a limited extent in Canada in 1937, when the governor-general, Lord Tweedsmuir, paid what was in effect a state visit to President Roosevelt of the United States, but that sort of journey was not repeated for many years. In Australia and New Zealand, a modified sort of exchange process began in the early 1970s, when Sir Paul Hasluck became the first governor-general of Australia to go overseas in his official capacity as the head of his own country, when he visited New Zealand. Hasluck’s 1971 trip was followed by a reciprocal state visit by the governor-general of New Zealand.
The Commonwealth practice has evolved since the time of Tweedsmuir and Hasluck, and so the governors-general of Australia, Canada and New Zealand now routinely stand in the sovereign’s place in connection with bilateral events. The Canadian governor-general David Johnston, for example, paid state visits to nations such as China, Israel and Sweden in the 2010s, but no equivalent state welcome has ever been provided by the British government for the governor-general of the three principal nations, or any of the other royal realms.
The Gazette does not reflect any of the honours that were conferred by the sovereign as king or queen of Australia, Canada and New Zealand in connection with the state visits by the governor-general, but it does record the awards of United Kingdom honours linked to the sovereign’s official visits to his or her overseas realms, as with Elizabeth II’s last trips to Canada in 2010 (Gazette issue 59500), and Australia in 2011 (Gazette issue 59971).
Other visits
On many occasions a foreign head of state came to the United Kingdom for some official or personal purpose, rather than for a state visit. On some occasions they would meet the sovereign, perhaps in the context of a multi-national event, or involving a private reception at Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle.
The informal visits were usually characterised by a lack of ceremonial, with no carriage procession and grand banquet, and the absence of an exchange of the most senior honours. The grand cross of the Order of St Michael and St George (GCMG) was sometimes used for the informal visits, rather than the more senior grand cross of the Order of the Bath (GCB) which was normally reserved for presidents, at the start of both inward and outward state visits.
During the first decade of the 21st century, the Queen presented the GCMG to more than a dozen presidents, including some from nations that had never previously engaged in the state visit process, such as Stjepan Mesic of Croatia, Eduard Shevardnadze of Georgia and Jose Gusmao of Timor-Leste, while a few of the more recent GCMGs were conferred on presidents whose nations had taken part in that process, as with Ferenc Madl of Hungary, Jorge Sampaio of Portugal, and Emil Konstantinescu of Romania.
The Gazette
For most of the period from Edward VII’s reign through to Charles III’s trip to the Holy See in 2025 The Gazette provided limited information about the timing and nature of the inward state visits, beyond the notices from the Central Chancery of the Orders of Knighthood about the award of honours to foreign heads of state and the members of their suite. Such notices were usually gazetted until the policy of announcing honorary awards in The Gazette was discontinued not long after George V’s succession to the crown in 1910.
The Gazette provides more information about outward visits, mainly because of:
- the need to appoint counsellors of state to administer the government when the sovereign is absent from the realm, as happened for the King’s visit to the Holy See in 2025 (Gazette issue 64881)
- the award of honours to some of the personnel who organised the visit, as happened after the visit to President Sergio Mattarella of Italy in 2025 (Gazette issue 64817)
These matters are dealt with more fully in a later article.
Succession to the Crown: From Charles II to Charles III
Succession to the Crown is essential reading for anyone with a keen interest in the British royal family and provides an excellent and trusted source of information for historians, researchers and academics alike. The book takes you on a journey exploring the coronations, honours and emblems of the British monarchy, from the demise of King Charles II in 1685, through to the accession of King Charles III, as recorded in The London Gazette.
Historian Russell Malloch tells the story of the Crown through trusted, factual information found in the UK's official public record. Learn about the traditions and ceremony engrained in successions right up to the demise of Queen Elizabeth II and the resulting proclamation and accession of King Charles III.
Available to order now from the TSO Shop.
About the author
Russell Malloch is a member of the Orders and Medals Research Society and an authority on British honours. He authored Succession to the Crown: From Charles II to Charles III, which explores the coronations, honours and emblems of the British monarchy.
See also
Demise of the Crown: #1: An introduction
Find out more
Succession to the Crown: - From Charles II to Charles III (TSO shop)
Images
- Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh in New York, 1957 (Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2025)
- Emperor Hirohito during a UK state visit in 1971 (Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2025)
- Queen Elizabeth II, President Eisenhower and Mamie Eisenhower at the 1957 state visit (Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2025)
- GCB, Grand Cross of Order of the Bath Star (Národní museum)
- The Gazette
Publication date
26 November 2025
Any opinion expressed in this article is that of the author and the author alone, and does not necessarily represent that of The Gazette.