Prince William and Princess Kate to travel abroad next year as heir gives update

Prince William and Princess Kate are planning overseas trips next year as William hopes his wife will be able to do “a bit more next year” following her cancer battle.

Speaking on the last day of his trip to Cape Town, the future King looked ahead to 2025 and said that while his children are unlikely to attend any tours, he and Kate have some travel in the pipeline. The trips are likely to be short and relatively close to home.

He said: “Family-wise, you’ve have to wait a little bit longer because obviously they’re at school and I think that takes priority over everything else.

“But I think hopefully Catherine will be doing a bit more next year, so, we’ll have some more trips maybe lined up.”

His comments come after William said on Thursday that this “dreadful” and “brutal” year has “been the hardest year in my life” due to the King and Kate’s cancer battles.

The Prince and Princess of Wales had been due to visit Rome this spring and travel to an unspecified country to visit serving British troops but the trips were cancelled following Kate’s abdominal surgery in January.

She spent 14 days in hospital and was subsequently diagnosed with an undisclosed form of cancer.

Kate revealed in September that she had completed her course of chemotherapy and was planning to ease herself back into royal duties. But she is likely to take a cautious approach over the coming months and into the New Year, attending engagements as and when she feels able to.

The princess attended the Festival of Remembrance last night and will join senior members of the Royal Family at the Cenotaph today.

The couple’s youngest child Prince Louis, six, has yet to join his parents on a royal tour.

Prince George, 11, made his tour debut when he was nine months old when the family spent three weeks in New Zealand and Australia in April 2014.

In September 2016, Princess Charlotte, nine, joined her older brother and parents on a trip to Canada when she was 16 months old.

It comes after Buckingham Palace sources revealed the King is planning to resume a full scheulde of overseas trips next year, with tours planned for the Spring and the Autumn.

Elsewhere in the interview, William said he is trying to adopt a new ‘small r’ approach to royal.

“I’m trying to do it differently and I’m trying to do it for my generation,” he said. “And to give you more an understanding around it, I’m doing it with maybe a smaller a smaller R in the royal.”

Explaining what that means in practice, William said: “It’s more about impact philanthropy, collaboration, convening, and helping people.

“And I’m also going to throw empathy in there as well, because I really care about what I do. “It helps impacts people’s lives and I think we could do with some more empathetic leadership around the world.

“So that’s what I’m trying to bring, that’s what Catherine is trying to bring as well.”

He said his key projects, Earthshot and Homewards, are centred around those values “of trying to help deliver change and make those lives better”.

William has just returned from a four-day trip to Cape Town for his Earthshot Prize, where five winners were awarded £1million to scale up their environmental solutions.

It is one of his defining projects, alongside his five-year Homewards initiatve that aims to prove that homelessness can be prevented.