Washington’s carefully choreographed welcome for King Charles III hit an embarrassing snag days before his arrival, when crews near the White House hoisted Australian flags instead of Union Jacks.

Fifteen Australian flags appeared among more than 230 banners installed along 17th Street NW near the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on Friday, April 25, 2026, ahead of the monarch’s four-day state visit, which began on Monday, April 27. The D.C. Department of Transportation removed the flags within hours after photographs spread across social media, drawing a mix of bemusement and ridicule.

“We posted those flags, but it was quickly rectified, and we were able to remove them,” a department official told The Washington Examiner.

The error likely stemmed from the Australian flag’s design, which features the Union Jack in its upper-left corner against a deep blue background dotted with six white stars. Officials say the flags are typically stored and labeled, and the agency is reviewing how the mix-up occurred.

A Defensible Mistake, if Barely

There is a thin technical defense: King Charles is also Australia’s head of state, albeit in a largely ceremonial capacity. That nuance was not lost on social media, where Australians delivered tongue-in-cheek commentary about the swap. Photographs posted by freelance reporter Andrew Leyden showed local government workers replacing the Australian banners with Union Jacks along the same stretch of road.

Officials stressed that the error was confined to a single corridor. British flags had already been correctly installed along other ceremonial routes.

A Visit Heavy with Symbolism

King Charles and Queen Camilla arrived in the capital on April 27 to mark the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Declaration of Independence — a delicate piece of diplomatic theater, given that the document announced the colonies’ break from his ancestors’ rule. It is the king’s first state visit to the United States as monarch, and is widely regarded as the most high-profile trip of his reign so far.

The itinerary is dense. Charles held a private meeting with President Trump at the White House and will deliver an address to a joint meeting of Congress — only the second time a British monarch has done so, following Queen Elizabeth II in 1991. On Monday evening, April 27, the president and first lady hosted a state dinner in the East Room. The royal couple will then travel to New York, where they will attend a ceremony at the September 11 memorial ahead of the 25th anniversary of the attacks, before finishing the U.S. leg in Virginia. From there, the king heads to Bermuda, a British overseas territory where he is also head of state.

Charles and Camilla last visited Washington, D.C., together in 2015, when, as Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall, they met President Obama at the White House.

Strained Ties Across the Atlantic

The trip arrives at a brittle moment for the so-called special relationship. Tensions have sunk to their lowest point in 70 years amid friction over the war in Iran and ongoing trade threats from President Trump. Last month, the President told Britain to “go get your own oil” from the Strait of Hormuz. He has previously dismissed Prime Minister Keir Starmer as “not Winston Churchill” and mocked Britain’s aircraft carriers as “toys.”

Trump, however, has remained effusive about the king himself. Asked by the BBC whether the visit could help repair ties, the president said: “He’s fantastic. He’s a fantastic man. Absolutely, the answer is yes. I know him well. I’ve known him for years. He’s a brave man, and he’s a great man.”

The warmth is, in part, reciprocal stagecraft. During Trump’s own state visit to the U.K. in September 2025, Charles hosted him at a Windsor Castle banquet attended by tech CEOs, media magnate Rupert Murdoch, and other prominent figures, and invited the President to inspect the Guard of Honour.

Nigel Sheinwald, Britain’s ambassador to Washington from 2007 to 2012, told Reuters the trip was not designed to repair governmental acrimony but to demonstrate something deeper. “Pretty much more than any other visit, this is about the long term. This is about the fundamentals of the relationship between our peoples, our countries.”

An Unenthusiastic Audience at Home

The royal visit has not landed well with the British public. A YouGov poll published in late March found that 49 percent of Britons opposed the trip, while just 33 percent said it should go ahead. The Liberal Democrats and the Greens have publicly called for the visit to be canceled, leaving Nigel Farage’s Reform UK as the only major party supportive of it.

The flags, at least, are now in order.