This day in history: 2.5 billion tune if for Princess Diana’s televised funeral

Nourhan SandoukSun, September 6, 2026 at 9:56 AM UTC

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On September 6, 1997, people gathered to watch the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales. The ceremonial funeral was one week after the accident and was watched by 2 billion people.

Born in 1961, Princess Diana was Prince Charles’s first wife.  Her relationship with Prince Charles was heavily followed by the media. During her pregnancy with Harry and after giving birth, Diana struggled with depression, and being constantly observed by the media only made her life worse.

By the early ‘90s, everyone could clearly see how unhappy Diana and Charles were, and soon British Prime Minister John Major announced Diana’s separation from Charles, and their divorce was finalized in 1996.

In 1997, Diana started dating Dodi Fayed. Members of the royal family and former Prime Minister Tony Blair didn’t like that, considering the relationship and Dodi himself a problem. That same year, it was reported that Diana and Fayed, after trying to escape the paparazzi, were killed in a car accident alongside their driver, Henri Paul.

The loss of “the people’s princess” wasn’t an easy thing to comprehend. On the day of the funeral, Scotland Yard said more than a million people went into central London to follow Diana’s funeral from Kensington Palace to Westminster Abbey. Thousands more lined the roads of north London and along the M1 motorway to her final resting place. Elton John performed a rewritten version of “Candle in the Wind,” and Diana’s brother spoke at the funeral, saying:

“We are all united not only in our desire to pay our respects to Diana but rather in our need to do so. For such was her extraordinary appeal that the tens of millions of people taking part in this service all over the world via television and radio who never actually met her, feel that they too lost someone close to them in the early hours of Sunday morning. It is a more remarkable tribute to Diana than I can ever hope to offer her today.”

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During her funeral, Prince Philip, King Charles, Princess Diana’s brother, Charles Spencer, and her two children, Prince William and Prince Harry, walked behind her coffin. At the time, William and Harry were just 15 and 12 years old.

“It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. But we were overwhelmed by how many people turned out; it was just incredible. There was that balance between duty and family, and that’s what we had to do.” Prince William said. Princess Diana was buried at Althorp, her family’s estate in Northamptonshire, England.

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”