It was a sunny coastal backdrop and a teenager squinting into the light — the kind of birthday video that could belong to almost any family, except this one comes with a throne somewhere in the distance. Prince George turned thirteen on Wednesday, July 22, 2026, and the occasion was marked with a short clip released by the Wales household showing the young prince in relaxed seaside mode, all salt air and easy smiles.
The footage, brief and warm in the way these official releases tend to be, landed on social media to the predictable flood of well-wishes and the slightly less predictable observations about how quickly he has grown. He has. The gap-toothed small boy from the hospital steps in 2013 is now a secondary-school-age teenager with a very specific September ahead of him.
Eton College, the 580-year-old boarding school that sits just across the river from Windsor Castle, will take George as a new pupil this autumn. His father, the Prince of Wales, attended. His grandfather, King Charles III, attended. The fees currently run to more than £50,000 a year, the waiting list runs long, and the uniform — that distinctive tailcoat — runs to photographs that tabloids will be waiting for come September.
For now, the brief is sand, sun, and thirteen candles. The Eton chapter opens in about eight weeks.