By Sumayya
LONDON — Kate, Princess of Wales, will go on her biggest overseas journey since getting treatment for cancer when she travels with her husband Prince William to India for his yearly Earthshot Prize awards this week.
Next-in-line-to-the-throne William, 44, and Kate are flying out for a group of events across Mumbai during a three-day trip that features Tuesday’s awards show.
For Kate, 44, the journey marks her most major international trip since she received preventive chemotherapy for an unnamed kind of cancer back in 2024. While her cancer is now in remission, she states the sickness still affects her daily life.
William, who, just like his father King Charles, has made fighting for nature one of his top goals, started the Earthshot Prize in 2020 with the hope of discovering answers to climate change. It gives five winners £1 million (US$1.3 million) each to grow their ideas.
“For the prince, Earthshot is ultimately about replacing pessimism with possibility,” a spokesperson for the pair’s office at Kensington Palace stated.
“It is about demonstrating that while the environmental challenges facing our planet are serious, the ingenuity, determination and creativity being applied to solving them are every bit as powerful.”
Cricket, Fashion and Cinema
At the awards show, which event planners say will be its largest yet, the royal couple will be met by several famous stars including Indian cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar, movie stars Alia Bhatt and Rami Malek, and British pop band Take That, who will put on their very first show in India.
“To be performing here for the very first time, after all these years, and alongside the extraordinary people creating a better future for our planet – is really special,” the band shared in a statement.
Outside of Earthshot, the royal pair will also go to gatherings tied to Indian cricket, fashion, and movies.
Ever since her sickness, Kate has greatly cut down her official job duties, stating she was taking each day one at a time. Even though her public outings have slowly gone up, she has not traveled with William on any earlier overseas trips.
Her single major foreign journey since 2024 took place in May when she traveled by herself to Italy for two days as part of her focus on early childhood growth.
“I was told in hospital that my recovery would not be linear. There will be good days and bad days, that it will take time,” she shared in a talk printed this week in the newest issue of Country Life magazine, where William worked as a guest editor.
