D-day 80th anniversary live: veterans and world leaders gather to commemorate landings

Here is a schedule of the main events

9.30am BST British Normandy Memorial service in Ver-sur-Mer – King Charles and Queen Camilla will join veterans at the British Normandy Memorial. It is the king’s first official overseas engagement since his cancer diagnosis. The service includes a tribute from the Red Arrows and performances from musicians.

10am BST Canadian Commemorative Event – Prince William will be in attendance at the Juno Beach Centre in Courseulles-sur-Mer.

11am BST Rishi Sunak will attend as the king and queen open the Winston Churchill Education and Learning Centre

11.30am BST BST US Commemorative Event – Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron speak after meeting veterans at the Normandy American Cemetery where there will be a 21 gun salute.

2pm BST The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh will attend the Royal British Legion’s service of remembrance at the National Memorial Arboretum.

2.30pm BST International ceremony at Omaha Beach – over 25 heads of state, veterans, officials honour the troops who landed on the beach at D-Day.

3pm BST An 80-strong boat flotilla parade in Falmouth. Around 27,000 American troops departed from the Falmouth area to travel to Normandy in 1944 as part of the D-Day landings.

7.30pm BST The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester to attend D-Day 80: Remembering the Normandy Landings at the Royal Albert Hall, London

For the first time this June, the British Normandy Memorial overlooking Gold beach, one of the two where British forces landed, is hosting the major anniversary commemoration.

The memorial near Ver-sur-Mer records the names of the 22,442 servicemen and women under British command, but of many nationalities, who lost their lives on D-day and during the Battle of Normandy in the summer of 1944.

Built at a cost of £27m, it only came to being after the former BBC royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell, while working in Normandy for radio, was introduced to George Batts, formerly a soldier in the Royal Engineers, at the 70th commemorations in 2015.

Speaking to the Guardian, Witchell said Batts had been “trying to do something about it for several years, but hadn’t really got anywhere and he asked if I would help”.

The BBC journalist joined forces with the architect Liam O’Connor, who designed the British armed forces memorial in Staffordshire and the Bomber Command memorial in London.

The site was formally inaugurated by Theresa May and Emmanuel Macron on 6 June 2019 – the 75th anniversary – but few could travel for its public opening in 2021 due to the Covid pandemic.

Witchell said Batts, who died in 2022, had only started campaigning for the memorial in his final years, and that this was typical of the wartime generation.

“After the war, Britain was bankrupt, and the British people, I think, wanted to move on. We just didn’t have the resources or the willpower by the late 40s. And then the moment had gone, really, and it has perhaps been for the postwar generation to pick it up again,” Witchell said.

Analysis: anniversary comes at time of conflict and growing carelessness

Dan Sabbagh

Twenty-two British D-day veterans, the youngest nearly 100, crossed the Channel on Tuesday to mark this week’s 80th anniversary of the landings in Normandy, representing a thinning thread to the heroics of two or three generations ago when about 150,000 allied soldiers began a seaborne invasion of western Europe that helped end the second world war.

Ron Hayward, a tank trooper who lost his legs fighting in France three weeks after D-day, told crowds assembled in Portsmouth on Wednesday why he and other soldiers were there: “I represent the men and women who put their lives on hold to go and fight for democracy and this country. I am here to honour their memory and their legacy, and to ensure that their story is never forgotten.”

There will not be many more opportunities to commemorate with survivors, while this time the presence of Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in France on 6 June will be a reminder that a part of Europe is in the grip of the largest war since 1945. A deadly war also rages in Gaza, while the living memory of the second world war fades into historical record.

While leaders present at Thursday’s commemorations in Normandy – King Charles, Rishi Sunak, Joe Biden, Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz – will strike appropriate notes, many of those representing forces of division will not be present, not least Vladimir Putin, the architect of the invasion on Ukraine.

On Friday, Biden is due to speak at Pointe du Hoc, where 80 years ago 225 US Rangers scaled 35-metre sheer cliffs using rope ladders shot over the top to capture a strategically situated artillery bunker. It was perhaps the most dangerous single mission on D-day, and casualties were severe. Only 90 were still able to fight when a count was taken a couple of days later.

There is almost certainly another reason for the location of Biden’s address, given the US president has an election to fight. Forty years ago a Republican president, Ronald Reagan, spoke on the cliffs at the same battle site, and in front of an audience of military veterans he justified the struggle of the day in terms not obviously recognisable in Donald Trump’s Republican worldview.

Daniel Boffey

I am on a media bus racing through the French countryside via a police escort on my way to the British Normandy memorial which is located close to the village of Ver sur Mer, and overlooks Gold beach, one of the two where the bulk of British forces landed on the morning of 6 June 1944.

The British commemorative event will start at 9.30am UK time. The prime minister Rishi Sunak, the King and Queen and French president Emmanuel Macron will be attending.

It is the first time the memorial which was officially opened in 2021 has been at the centre of the D-Day commemorations, and it is likely the last time that such significant numbers of veterans will be in attendance on such a landmark day of remembrance.

French officials estimate that just 200 veterans have travelled to Normandy this year, mainly Americans. The Royal British Legion have assisted 20 men in coming over from the UK.

The British service starts at 9.30am UK time and ends an hour later.

Then at 14.30 UK time there will be international event at Omaha Beach, Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer, where the US president Joe Biden and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy will be among 25 heads of state and government honouring the sacrifices of 80 years ago.

Royals and world leaders are gathering with veterans in northern France today to mark 80 years since the D-day landings.

The seaborne invasion, which was the largest in history, saw more than 150,000 allied troops invade Normandy in a turning point of the second world war.

Memorial events are planned in France and also the UK, for those veterans unable to travel to France.

Yesterday, King Charles paid tribute to D-day veterans at a commemorative event in Portsmouth.

Charles said their “stories of courage, resilience and solidarity” move, inspire and “remind us of what we owe to that great wartime generation – now, tragically, dwindling to so few”.

He said:

Those who gathered here in Portsmouth would never forget the sight. It was by far the largest military fleet the world has ever known. Yet all knew that both victory and failure were possible, and none could know their fate.

Aircrew flying overhead, sailors manning warships; or troops in assault craft battering their way through the stormy swell to the shore; whether dropping by parachute, landing in a wooden glider, or taking that terrible leap of faith on to the beaches … all must have questioned whether they would survive and how they would respond when faced with such mortal danger.