King Charles has surpassed Princess Anne in being crowned the hardest-working member of the royal family in 2025, despite facing weekly cancer treatment.
The King has finally beaten his young sister’s track record after she was consecutively named the most hard-working royal over the past five years.
Last year the King conducted 533 engagements which was the most he’d done since 2019 when he did 541. This included travelling across the world, with three high-profile state visits to Italy, Canada and Poland.
The Princess Royal was just behind her brother, on 478, although she did have more working days overall with a total of 186.
The King was described as “indefatigable” by analyst Patricia Treble, who shared that “it felt like the House of Windsor was making up for lost time”, as reported by the Telegraph.
Productivity was particularly high all-round for the royal family last year, with a grand total of 2,459 engagements, according to an analysis documented in the Court Circular. The ten working royals completed 23 per cent more jobs in 2025 than in 2024 – a year when the King and Princess of Wales were both diagnosed with cancer.
This was followed by Prince Edward, who scored 313 royal engagements and the Duchess of Edinburgh who had completed 235.
Queen Camilla also came shortly behind this, with 228 engagements, just above the Duke of Gloucester, who had 212 engagements.
The Duke, Prince Richard, is the second eldest working Royal aged 81, and he even outdid William Prince of Wales who had 202 engagements in 2025, which was 139 more than the year earlier.
The Duchess of Gloucester completed 113 and the 90-year-old Duke of Kent managed 77 engagements in the same year in which his wife, Duchess of Kent, passed away in September at age 92.
The Princess of Wales, who was in remission from cancer, conducted 68 engagements in 2025, after revealing the recovery was a lot harder than anticipated. She shared on a trip to Colchester hospital in Essex that “You put on a sort of brave face, stoicism through treatment.
“Treatment’s done, then it’s like, ‘I can crack on, get back to normal’, but actually, the phase afterwards is really, really difficult.
“You’re not necessarily under the clinical team any longer, but you’re not able to function normally at home as you perhaps once used to.”
All of the Royals stepped up their workload this year with Princess Anne having a 10.39 per cent increase and the Princess of Wales having a rise of 423 per cent – a rise reflecting how she was forced to step back from royal duties in 2024 due to chemotherapy.
