King Charles to skip Buckingham Palace as Britain swelters in record heat
Buckingham Palace will stay a workplace, not a home, as Britain hit 36.1C and schools, trains and ambulances strained under a rare red heat warning.
King Charles III will not live at Buckingham Palace after a 10-year refurbishment that is costing about £369 million to £370 million, even as the building remains the ceremonial and operational center of the monarchy. The decision ends nearly two centuries in which the palace served as the monarch’s primary residence, and it comes after neither Charles nor Queen Elizabeth II had stayed overnight there since 2019.
The Royal Household has framed the overhaul as a practical reset for a building that still draws about 700,000 visitors a year. The King will keep private rooms there that could be used for accommodation, but Buckingham Palace will function as a workplace and state setting rather than the London home of the sovereign. The spending has been set out in royal finance figures released alongside the King’s personal tax payments and the cost of royal trips, putting the palace bill into the wider public view at a time when households are already watching every large institutional expense.
At the same moment, Britain was dealing with a different kind of strain: heat. The Met Office said 36.1C was provisionally measured at Gosport, Hampshire, on 24 June 2026, setting a new June maximum temperature record for the United Kingdom and beating the previous mark of 35.6C from 1976, which had been matched in 1957. The reading also matched 36C temperatures recorded in Gosport and Wisley, Surrey, as much of England and Wales endured exceptionally hot and humid conditions.
The heat prompted a rare red extreme-heat warning, a signal that the public-health threat had moved beyond discomfort into disruption. Schools closed early, train companies reduced services, and the London Ambulance Service was stretched as emergency demand rose in the capital. The warning also reflected the broader pressure of the European heatwave, which has already caused deaths in other countries and underscored how quickly extreme temperatures can test transport systems, health services and the people who rely on them most.
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