On December 16, Prince William and Prince George made a poignant father and son visit to The Passage, a homelessness charity that Princess Diana first took William to in 1993.News broke of William and George’s visit on December 20.George, 12, got to sign a guestbook on the same page that also had Diana’s signature—and his reaction was extremely thoughtful and touching.
On December 20, news broke that Prince George made a poignant visit earlier in the week with his father Prince William to The Passage, a homelessness charity that a young William once visited alongside his mother, Princess Diana.
Prince William and Prince George at The Passage on December 16, 2025.
Prince and Princess of Wales/Instagram
The visit itself actually happened a few days earlier on December 16, and while there, the 12-year-old future king took a moment to sign the organization’s guestbook, which had previously been signed by both Diana and William on a visit mother and son had made there together on December 14, 1993—almost 32 years to the day earlier. As George saw the distinctive signature of his late grandmother—who died at just 36 years old in an August 31, 1997 car crash in Paris—he was reportedly “fascinated” by the moment, being heard to say “Wow, okay,” when seeing Diana’s signature (per The Daily Mail).
The guestbook entry bearing Princess Diana, Prince William, and Prince George’s signatures.
Prince and Princess of Wales/Instagram
Mick Clarke, chief executive of The Passage, described the father and son visit as “a proud dad moment” for William and a chance to tell George, “That’s my mum.” William, for his part, introduced George to Clarke by saying to his son, “This is the guy I was telling you about.”
William made his first visit to The Passage when he was 11 years old; at 12, George’s first visit happened at nearly the same age. George has had a number of firsts this year—a meaningful tea party appearance with his parents the Prince and Princess of Wales at Buckingham Palace back in May in honor of VE Day, and in November, George accompanied his mom Kate Middleton to a Remembrance event, standing in for William as the Prince of Wales traveled back to the U.K. from Brazil. The Passage visit is also loaded with meaning, and while there the two future kings helped prepare Christmas lunches for the homeless, which Clarke told George, “is a really important day, because it’s for people who perhaps won’t have a place that they can call home this Christmas.”
“I said, ‘We’ve just got a number of different things for you to help us with, so time to roll your sleeves up and get stuck in,’” Clarke said. “He was well up for it. Absolutely. Very much like his dad in terms of he just wanted to crack on, which was lovely.”
Of the sentimental moment where George signed the guestbook, Clarke said, “We looked before and the page that I had from William’s very first visit with his mum. As you’ll see in the photo, it has Diana 1993, William 1993. And there was a gap, you know, kind of underneath it. And so we’d asked William, ‘Do you think George would like to sign this?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, that would be great.’ So that was really lovely because it was also a lovely moment where William was able to say to George, ‘That’s my mum. And this was the very first day that she took me to The Passage.’ And it was a lovely moment in terms of almost coming full circle from 1993 to the end of 2025.”
William and George visited for “around an hour” before leaving to join the rest of the royal family for King Charles’s Christmas lunch at Buckingham Palace.
“One of the nice things is it’s very much like any family, really, in terms of it had to be the right time and feel right for them and, most importantly I think, feel right for George,” Clarke said of the preteen’s first visit. “So, you know, we talked over the last couple of years really in terms of that, you know, that’d be great to do.”
Prince George and Prince William volunteering at The Passage.
Prince and Princess of Wales/Instagram
When William became royal patron of The Passage in 2019, he said, “The visits I made as a child to this place left a deep and lasting impression upon me.” In his 2024 documentary Prince William: We Can End Homelessness, he added, “I’d never been to anything like that before. And I was a bit anxious as to what to expect.”
“My mother went about her usual part of making everyone feel relaxed and having a laugh and joking with everyone,” he continued. “I remember at the time kind of thinking, ‘Well, if everyone’s not got a home, they’re all going to be really sad.’ But it was incredible how happy an environment it was.”
William has opened up numerous times about how he tells his three children about his mother, and told British GQ in May 2017—just ahead of the 20-year anniversary of her death—how heartbreaking it was that she never got to meet his wife and kids. “I would like to have had her advice,” he said. “I would love her to have met Catherine and to have seen the children grow up. It makes me sad that she won’t, that they will never know her.”
Princess Diana and Prince William at the christening of Princess Eugenie in 1990.
Princess Diana Archive/Getty Images
“I can talk about her more openly, talk about her more honestly, and I can remember her better, and publicly talk about her better,” he added. “It has taken me almost 20 years to get to that stage. I still find it difficult now because at the time, it was so raw. And also it is not like most people’s grief, because everyone else knows about it, everyone knows the story, everyone knows her.”