2025 at Historic Royal Palaces

Historic Royal Palaces (HRP), the charity that loves and looks after HM Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, Kensington Palace, Kew Palace, Banqueting House and Hillsborough Castle & Gardens, is set to embark on another busy year in 2025. The programme is full of new exhibitions and displays, live events and unmissable family trails as well as exciting new endeavours across conservation, sustainability, access, and education. With many more exciting announcements to come, 2025 promises to be an action-packed year for the palaces!

At Kensington Palace, a new exhibition, Dress Codes, will open on 13 March, showcasing both instantly recognisable and rarely seen highlights from the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection. Featuring clothing worn by Princess Margaret and Diana, Princess of Wales, the display will explore the codes and conventions of royal clothing, and the powerful impact fashion can make when boundaries are pushed and dress codes evolve. Looking through a contemporary lens at historic royal and court dress - including an extremely rare Japanese court suit and stunning 1920s Reville court dress - the exhibition will reveal global connections alongside personal stories with resonance for the modern ‘dress codes’ we all follow today.

On 15 March, a royal fashion exhibition Royal Style in the Making will launch at Hillsborough Castle and Gardens, the official royal residence in Northern Ireland cared for by Historic Royal Palaces. An intimate glimpse into the world of the royal couturier and the working relationship between fashion designer and royal client, this exhibition will reveal the creative process and craftsmanship behind clothing destined for the world stage while exploring how fashion shaped the style and image of the monarchy throughout the twentieth century. Visitors will have the rare opportunity to see original sketches, fabric swatches and embroidery samples from the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection, as well as three spectacular garments created for the late Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Margaret and Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother. 

At the Tower of London, on 23 May the Medieval Palace will re-open as a re-imagined permanent exhibition, transporting visitors to the medieval period through innovative storytelling, hands-on interactives and multisensory displays. For the first time, visitors will not only experience the stories of the kings who built and inhabited these spaces, but also of the queens who ruled with them, and the households who served them.  

Meanwhile in April, visitors are invited to enjoy one of the UK’s largest displays of planted tulips, as the annual Tulip Festival returns to Hampton Court Palace with over 100,000 bulbs throughout the gardens and cobbled courtyards. The Palace has a long association with the elegant tulip, as former resident Queen Mary II was a keen horticulturist and collected exotic plants to feature in the gardens. 

In July, Henry VIII’s Joust returns to Hampton Court Palace for two weekends only, where visitors will be dazzled by daredevil tricks performed on horseback, pick their favourite knight and cheer, jeer, and follow all the fun of an epic face-off until one knight reigns supreme. Later in the summer, Peter Rabbit ™ will be hopping over to the palace for a family trail that combines the sweeping gardens with the mischievous tales of Beatrix Potter’s fictional characters. Officially licensed by Frederick Warne & Co. (Beatrix Potter’s original publisher and owner of The World of Peter Rabbit™), the Peter Rabbit™ Adventure will bring Beatrix Potter’s beloved characters to life, with the chance for children and adults alike to meet a larger-than-life Peter Rabbit during their summer outing to Henry VIII’s Tudor palace. 

2025 will also see the continuation of vital conservation works across the palaces, including the famous Great Gatehouse at Hampton Court Palace, and the Middle Tower at the Tower of London.  We will also progress our sustainability programme and stewardship of the environment around the palaces, ensuring that these special places will remain sources of joy and inspiration for hundreds of years to come.

In September 2024, HRP appointed the award-winning garden designer Ann-Marie Powell to redesign the Great Fountain Garden at Hampton Court Palace to make it more sustainable, climate resilient and biodiverse in the years to come. The design phase of the project is now well underway, with practical changes expected in Autumn 2025.  

The Banqueting House – the last surviving building of Whitehall Palace – is now part way through a year-long construction and conservation project to transform the building’s interior, thanks to support from the Garfield Weston Foundation and Wolfson Foundation. Famed for being the site where Charles I was executed in 1649, it is also home to a magnificent ceiling painting by Peter Paul Rubens originally commissioned in 1629 by Charles I as a testament to the glory of the Stuart monarchs. Among other things, this project allows a team of experts to conserve and restore important historic fabric, including early 20th century wall paintings, while also improving access by adding a lift and installing an air source heat pump to help reach HRP’s goal of nature positive, carbon net zero by 2050.

Notes to editors

For further information or further images please contact the HRP Press Office via press@hrp.org.uk / 020 3166 6166

Historic Royal Palaces is the independent charity that loves and looks after six of the most wonderful palaces in the world. The palaces are the setting for the stories that shape us all, and we’re bringing them to people in ways that mean more to them. We want everyone to find themselves in the spaces and stories we share. 

Registered charity number 1068852. For more information visit www.hrp.org.uk