Incredible Royal Tiaras and Jewels at Sweden’s Golden Jubilee Banquet

The 50th anniversary of King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden’s accession day came to a bejeweled conclusion on Friday night with a grand gala banquet in the Throne Room at the Royal Palace in Stockholm.

For the white-tie banquet, the King piled on the orders and decorations, wearing the collars of both the Order of the Seraphim and the Order of Vasa.

You knew that Queen Silvia was going to pull out all the stops for her husband’s Golden Jubilee banquet, and you were right! She wore a gold gown with a bodice decorated with white, red, and green crystals.

And the jewels? Major. She wore the immense tiara from the Braganza Parure, made in the 1820s for an Empress of Brazil. She also added the Karl Johan Earrings, which also date to the early nineteenth century, plus a diamond necklace and one of the family’s rose brooches.

Crown Princess Victoria floated into the banquet wearing a blue ombre ballgown with a deep neckline. The dress coordinated perfectly with the color of the sash of the Order of the Seraphim (worn by all but two of the women featured in this article) and the blue ribbon of King Carl XVI Gustaf’s Royal Family Order.

Victoria reached for her signature tiara for the banquet, wearing the dazzling Baden Fringe Tiara. The tiara, as the name suggests, originally belonged to Victoria’s great-great-grandmother, Victoria of Baden.

She added even more heirloom jewels to the look as well. Her earrings are part of the Braganza Parure, while her diamond and sapphire cluster brooch comes from the Leuchtenberg Sapphire Parure. (Her mother wore the same brooch a few hours earlier!) Video from the dinner shows that Victoria also wore some of the hairpins from the sapphire suite in her updo.

Princess Sofia of Sweden went with a golden theme for her ensemble for the banquet, wearing a Safiyaa gown—and debuting another set of toppers for her tiara!

Sofia wore her diamond palmette tiara with a set of honey-colored briolette toppers for the banquet. The rich color of the gems coordinated perfectly with the floral embellishments on her dress. This means that she now has six (!) separate settings for the tiara: all diamonds, emeralds, pearls, turquoises, blue topazes, and citrines. Amazing!

Sofia also wore jewelry from the royal vaults for the occasion, donning the family’s gorgeous diamond floral earrings and the Swedish Diamond Lozenge Brooch, and finished off the look with a diamond bracelet and a diamond ring.

Princess Madeleine was ultra-elegant at the banquet in a very sparkly dress by Jenny Packham.

Madeleine wore the Modern Fringe Tiara, a convertible jewel that is now part of her own personal collection. She wore the tiara for her royal wedding in 2013.

Even more exciting, though, were her earrings! These are the amazing earrings from the Russian Pink Topaz Demi-Parure, a suite of jewelry that originated with the Romanovs and came to Sweden with Victoria of Baden.

The King’s sister, Princess Christina, arrived for the banquet on the arm of her husband, Tord Magnuson. She wore a caftan-style evening gown embroidered with butterflies, worn previously for the Nobels in 2022.

Indeed, almost Christina’s entire banquet look was a repeat from the 2022 Nobels. She wore the Connaught Diamond Tiara, a favorite of her mother, the late Princess Sibylla, with pearls. (The tiara was also Christina’s bridal diadem.) She secured her sash this time with a diamond brooch rather than her pearl cluster and wore diamond earrings instead of pearl drops. The gold necklace that she wears is a decoration rather than a jewel: the King’s Medal. Her brother bestowed the honor on her in June 2021, in recognition of her “major non-profit social contributions.”

The Danes and the Norwegians brought along their tiaras for the banquet, too. Queen Margrethe II of Denmark wore an eye-catching ballgown with a red coral design. (Margrethe previously wore this entire gala ensemble during the Norwegian visit to Denmark earlier this year.)

Margrethe never disappoints when it comes to jewelry references—she’s one of the savviest royal jewelry wearers in all of Europe. You knew she’d bring along some Swedish royal pieces for the banquet! She wore the Pearl Poiré Tiara with its married parure. The tiara and brooch came to Denmark with Queen Lovisa, the only surviving (legitimate) child of King Carl XV of Sweden. The necklace (and the earrings that were later made by repurposing some of its drops) was Lovisa’s wedding gift from the Khedive of Egypt.

Crown Princess Mary of Denmark shimmered in a navy blue gown with a sparkling bodice and sleeves for the dinner.

She accessorized with the diamond setting of her wedding tiara and her aquamarine and diamond girandole earrings.

She also wore her large aquamarine cocktail ring and one of her Annikat diamond wing bracelets.

Like her sister, Queen Margrethe, Queen Anne-Marie of Greece made references to their Swedish royal roots with her jewelry. She wore a deep red evening dress with gold accessories as she arrived for the banquet on the arm of Crown Prince Haakon of Norway. (Crown Princess Mette-Marit, sadly, was too ill to make the trip.)

Queen Anne-Marie wore the Khedive of Egypt Tiara, a romantic royal jewel given as a wedding present to her grandmother, Princess Margaret of Connaught, when she married King Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden in 1905. The tiara is now the traditional bridal diadem for the descendants of Margaret’s daughter, Queen Ingrid of Denmark.

Anne-Marie also wore diamond earrings and part of Queen Alexandrine’s Diamond Sautoir Necklace, and she referenced the red color of her gown with a ruby and diamond pendant, bracelet, and heart-shaped brooch.

And finally, we’ve got Queen Sonja of Norway wearing a gala dress in one of her favorite colors, bright canary yellow. She paired the dress with the Norwegian Emeralds, repeating a gown-and-jewels combination that she wore in Denmark for Queen Margrethe’s Golden Jubilee last September.

Here’s a closer look at the magnificent emeralds, which have a major connection to Sweden. They traveled to Sweden from Brazil via the Leuchtenbergs, ending up in the jewelry collection of Princess Ingeborg of Sweden, the grandmother of the present King of Norway. She bequeathed them to her daughter, Norway’s Crown Princess Martha, and they’ve been part of the collection in Oslo for decades.