Queen Charlotte’s Ball, the debutante ball George III began in 1780 for his queen’s birthday, presented its 2025 debutantes at One Whitehall Place.
The London Season presented its 2025 debutantes at Queen Charlotte’s Ball at One Whitehall Place on Saturday 6 September 2025.
George III gave the first ball in 1780 for the birthday of his wife, Queen Charlotte. The money it raised funded a London women’s hospital that later carried her name. It became the premier debutante ball, outlived the end of presentation at court in 1958 and folded in 1976.
Jennie Hallam-Peel, a former debutante, revived it on the wish of Peter Townend, the social editor who had kept the Season going until his death in 2001. The London Season relaunched the ball in 2009 and runs it for charity.
Each debutante is interviewed before she is chosen and spends months fundraising. The curtsey once made to a queen is now made to a cake.
At the 2025 ball the debutantes wore gowns by Josephine Scott. Four Chelsea Pensioners and two Guards officers led the procession of a seven-tier cake. Each debutante was presented by her father to the Duchess of St Albans and Princess Aisha Shah of Lahore.
The money raised went to GamMed, whose British surgeons operate on children in The Gambia.