On Thursday, after Trooping the Color, the Queen will return to Windsor for a nightly ceremony during which she will symbolically light the Jubilee’s main lighthouse, as part of a double ceremony with her grandson, the Duke of Cambridge.
He will play a blue “Commonwealth Balloon” placed on a blue and gold cushion, which will trigger a cascade of lights chasing from Windsor to London, ending 22 miles away at Buckingham Palace.
There, the Duke of Cambridge will observe how the “tree of trees”, a sculpture made up of 350 native trees, will be illuminated, the culmination of a sequence of 3,000 beacons around the Commonwealth.
On Wednesday, Princess Eugenia paid her first family tribute to her grandmother. The princess said she hoped her one-year-old son, Augustus, would have the “patience, calm and kindness” of the queen, while always being able to laugh at himself and keep a twinkle in his eye. .
The rest of the jubilee weekend will include a Thanksgiving service at St. Paul’s Cathedral for the Queen’s reign. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, as well as the Duke of York, are expected to attend.
On Saturday, the BBC will broadcast a star concert from outside Buckingham Palace. On Sunday, millions of people will gather for patriotic street parties, picnics and barbecues ahead of a parade through the streets of London, with a cast of 6,000 performers and nearly 200 celebrities joining the procession.