Kate Middleton and Prince William’s History of Easter with Royals

• Kate Middleton and Prince William have confirmed they will not join the royal family for church on Easter
• The Prince and Princess of Wales have attended the Easter Matins Service in Windsor just five times together as a couple, most recently skipping in 2024 just days after Kate publicly announced her cancer diagnosis
• Prince William and Princess Kate will instead spend Easter this year in Norfolk with their children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis

Kate Middleton and Prince William are central members of the royal family, but they don’t always spend the holiday with William’s relatives.

The Prince and Princess of Wales revealed on April 17 that they won’t join the royal family on Easter this year. Instead, William, 42, and Kate, 43, will spend the holiday weekend in Norfolk, where they have a country home, with their three children: Prince George, 11, Princess Charlotte, 9, and Prince Louis, 6.

Buckingham Palace previously announced that King Charles, Queen Camilla and other members of the royal family would attend the Easter Matins Service at St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle on Sunday, April 20.

The tradition of celebrating Easter with mass at St. George’s Chapel has been a royal staple for generations, and one Prince William began participating in as a child. William attended his first royal Easter at age 4 in 1987, where he matched his mom, Princess Diana, in a robin’s egg blue coat and walked to church hand-in-hand with her and his cousin, Peter Phillips.

Prince William went on to marry Kate in 2011. However, royal watchers may be surprised to learn that the couple didn’t join the royal family church outing on Easter for six more years! 

In 2014, William and Kate memorably took an almost 2-year-old Prince George along with them on a royal tour of Australia and New Zealand that overlapped with Easter. The royal couple, then known as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, attended an Easter Sunday Service at St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Sydney but didn’t bring young George along. 

William and Kate also missed Easter in Windsor the following year, where his grandmother Queen Elizabeth led the way at the church service. Their decision to skip the event in April 2015 may have been made to accommodate Kate, as she suffered from hyperemesis gravidarum (severe morning sickness) during her pregnancies and was then just a few weeks away from giving birth to Princess Charlotte. 

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge joined the royals for the Easter Matins Service together for the first time in 2017, where Kate dipped into a picture-perfect curtsy as a gesture of respect when Queen Elizabeth passed by.

They attended Easter again in April 2018, in what was Kate’s last public appearance before Prince Louis was born later in the month. 

William and Kate kept the streak running by joining his family on the holiday in 2019, though the tradition was canceled in 2020 and 2021 amid the global COVID pandemic. The couple returned to the service when it was brought back in full force in 2022, bringing Prince George and Princess Charlotte for a double debut.

Prince Louis tagged along for the Easter Matins Service for the first time in 2023, and the Wales family had a matching moment by wearing blue hues.

Can’t get enough of PEOPLE’s Royals coverage? Sign up for our free Royals newsletter to get the latest updates on Kate Middleton, Meghan Markle and more! 

Prince William, Princess Kate and their kids didn’t appear on Easter in 2024 as the holiday fell a week after Kate announced that she was undergoing treatment for cancer. The Princess of Wales stepped out of the spotlight for most of the rest of the year to focus on her health, sharing in September that she completed chemotherapy and relaying with “relief” on Jan. 14 that she is in “remission.”

While King Charles, 76, and Queen Camilla, 77, will lead the royal family on Easter, they didn’t always attend the holiday church service. During Queen Elizabeth’s reign and before Charles’ accession to the throne, the couple often skipped the royal family’s gathering, instead spending Easter in Scotland.