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Prince William and Kate Middleton are set to attend the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, England after the couple first attended the event with Prince Harry in 2014.
The games will run from July 28 to August 8 and feature 4,500 sportsmen and women from 72 nations, with members of the royal family attending separate days to watch the events.
According to an announcement from Buckingham Palace, William and Kate are scheduled to attend on August 2, which will feature, among other events, aquatics, wheelchair basketball, badminton and gymnastics.
Traditionally Queen Elizabeth II would be expected to officially open the games when Britain is the host nation, as she did in 2002 in Manchester and 2014 in Glasgow.
This year, however, it has been announced that Prince Charles would represent the monarch at the opening ceremony, accompanied by his wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall.
The announcement follows the scaling back of the 96-year-old queen's public appearances in the wake of a series of health and mobility issues that have arisen over the past year.
Charles has seen his number of public engagements increase as he has been asked to deputize for his mother at official events such as the Platinum Jubilee celebrations in June and most notably the State Opening of Parliament in May.
The queen has adopted a new working model which sees her public appearances not announced beforehand, leaving the decision whether to attend events to be made on the day in consultation with her doctors.
The most recent engagement undertaken by the queen was a visit to a newly refurbished hospice close to her Windsor Castle home on July 15. She was accompanied by her daughter, Princess Anne.
The news that William and Kate will attend the Commonwealth Games comes as the couple have been seen at a number of sports events this year including the Six Nations rugby union match between England and Wales, Royal Ascot and Wimbledon.
The couple first attended the Commonwealth Games in 2014 alongside Prince Harry, with the trio photographed together watching the field hockey and gymnastics events in Glasgow. Harry was still a serving member in the armed forces at the time.
The reported royal rift that has developed between William and Harry in recent years has been pulled into focus with the recent publication of a sensational biography by British author Tom Bower.
The book, Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the war between the Windsors, makes a number of claims including that Harry changed his mobile number without telling his family following his marriage and that Meghan Markle hated being compared to sister-in-law Kate.
Harry stepped down as a full-time working member of the royal family in 2020 and in doing so surrendered his official royal patronages back to the queen. One of these roles was as Commonwealth Youth Ambassador, a capacity in which he would likely have attended the 2022 Commonwealth Games.
The prince is currently in an ongoing legal battle with the U.K. government over the security allocated to him when he and his family visit Britain. The current arrangement, legal filings earlier this year stated, left the royal feeling there was "too great a personal risk" to him visiting his home country.
In addition to William, Kate, Charles and Camilla, the queen's son and daughter-in-law Prince Edward and Sophie, Countess of Wessex are due to attend the games over five days as the prince is Vice-Patron of the Commonwealth Games Federation.
The queen's daughter Princess Anne and cousins the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester will also make appearances.
About the writer
James Crawford-Smith is a Newsweek Royal Reporter, based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on the British royal family ... Read more