Windsor Prepares: What the Sultan of Oman's State Visit Means for Britain

Windsor Castle is preparing to welcome His Majesty Sultan Haitham bin Tarik, Sultan of Oman, on a state visit to the United Kingdom from Tuesday 20 to Thursday 22 October, an occasion announced by Buckingham Palace on 3 September and already circled in red ink in the royal household's autumn diary.

It will be the first state visit by a Sultan of Oman since Queen Elizabeth II hosted Sultan Qaboos in March 1982, and the parallel is deliberate. That visit, four decades ago, is still remembered in Muscat with genuine affection. Few bilateral relationships in the Gulf are as deep, as durable or as quietly valued as the one between Britain and Oman, and the full honours of a state visit are the monarchy's way of saying so.

The programme follows the stately pattern of Windsor visits. A royal salute will be fired from the Home Park and the Tower of London. A guard of honour will await in the Quadrangle, the national anthems of both countries will be played, and a special exhibition of Oman related items will be displayed in the Green Drawing Room, drawn from the Royal Collection's long memory of the friendship.

The Waleses take their places

The Prince and Princess of Wales will play key roles throughout. William and Catherine will join the carriage procession to the castle, and Catherine is expected to attend the state banquet in the State Dining Room, where both the King and the Sultan will speak. Their presence is now a settled feature of state visits at Windsor, and it lends the occasion its generational balance: the sovereign who embodies the relationship's past, and the heir who will carry its future.

For the King, the visit has a personal texture. He travelled to Oman four times as Prince of Wales, most recently in January 2020, when he flew to Muscat to offer condolences after the death of Sultan Qaboos. The new Sultan received him then in mourning; in July last year he took tea with the King at Windsor, a quiet courtesy that spoke of genuine ease between the two courts.

A partnership forged in the Gulf

Oman's value to Britain is easily understated precisely because it is so rarely dramatic. The sultanate is a longstanding partner on trade, energy and security, a stable interlocutor in a restless region, and a country whose friendship has been cultivated by four generations of the Royal Family. Oman sits at the mouth of the Gulf, overlooking some of the most consequential shipping lanes on earth, and British governments of every stripe have learned the worth of a friend there. Energy ties run deep, and British firms have long found in Muscat a door that opens.

The visit also slots into a busy royal autumn, one more set piece in a season that has tested the household's stamina and the King's diary alike. State visits are labour intensive productions, every place setting and parade step rehearsed, and Windsor in October will be expected to perform to the standard set in a remarkable year of royal diplomacy.

When the carriages turn into the Quadrangle next month, the welcome will be warm because it is real. Some state visits are diplomacy dressed as friendship. This one, by every account, is the other way round. The castle, the cavalry and the silver will merely be the frame.