Charles Hits His Lowest Popularity Of The Reign As William And Catherine Top The Royal Tracker

LONDON — King Charles’s popularity has fallen to its lowest level of his reign in YouGov’s royal favourability tracker, published on Thursday — even as the Prince and Princess of Wales tighten their hold on the top of the table and support for the monarchy itself holds at just under two-thirds of the country. The tracker, based on a survey of 2,116 adults in Great Britain on October 22 and 23, found 58 per cent of Britons view the King positively, against 34 per cent who view him negatively: a net score of +24, down from +31 in July, and the lowest recorded in the 26 polls YouGov has run since he came to the throne.

The Table

Prince William is Britain’s most popular royal, with 74 per cent positive against 18 per cent negative, followed closely by Catherine, the Princess of Wales, at 72 per cent positive and the lowest negative score of any senior royal. Princess Anne is third at 68 per cent, ahead of the King at 58. The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, Edward and Sophie, stand at 51 per cent each, and Queen Camilla divides the country at 42 per cent positive against 45 per cent negative — YouGov describes her as the more divisive of the senior royals. Below them the numbers fall away: Princess Beatrice at 29 per cent, Princess Eugenie at 28, and at the bottom Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, viewed positively by just 4 per cent of Britons and negatively by 89 per cent.

The Sussexes’ Record Lows

Prince Harry’s ratings have worsened since the summer: 29 per cent of Britons view him positively, down four points since July, against 60 per cent negative. Meghan’s are worse — 20 per cent positive, 68 per cent negative, a net favourability of −48 that is the lowest the tracker has ever recorded for her, down three points since the summer. A separate YouGov question for HELLO! magazine found 82 per cent of Britons do not see Harry as a working royal.

A Generational Split

The institution itself remains majority-backed: 64 per cent of Britons say the UK should remain a kingdom rather than move to an elected head of state, and institutional support has stayed in a 61–67 per cent range across Charles’s four-year reign. But the age split underneath is sharp. Among over-65s, 81 per cent want to keep the monarchy, and William and Catherine score 87 and 88 per cent positive. Among 18-to-24-year-olds, only 46 per cent favour keeping it; William and Catherine fall to 55 and 51 per cent, and the King is underwater with the youngest voters — 38 per cent positive against 39 per cent negative.

While The King Tours

The poll lands in the middle of the King’s nine-day Caribbean tour, where he has faced renewed calls to address Britain’s historical role in slavery — and where, on Wednesday, he was seen dancing and shaking cowbells during a Junkanoo parade in Nassau, in the Bahamas. HELLO! magazine, analysing the slump, noted the weight of the King’s recent diary, undertaken while he lives with cancer: hosting the Sultan of Oman’s state visit, travelling to Aberfan to meet survivors of the 1966 disaster, and then the Caribbean tour itself. The magazine also cautioned that July’s reading may have been unusually buoyant, lifted by the King’s successful state visit to the United States; on that reading, October’s figure is a return toward his April level rather than a collapse — but it is, on YouGov’s own count, the lowest of the reign either way.

Sources: YouGov royal favourability tracker, fieldwork October 22–23, 2026, published October 29; USA Today; HELLO! — reporting of October 29, 2026.