Ingrid Alexandra is Norway’s new crown princess and heir to the throne after the death of her grandfather King Harald V on Friday, 28 August 2026, making the 22-year-old the country’s first female heir in roughly 600 years.
That last part is the history bit. Norway rewrote its constitution in 1990 to guarantee absolute primogeniture, meaning the eldest child inherits regardless of gender, as reported by Hola!, and Ingrid Alexandra was the first royal baby born after the change.
She is also the first woman set to inherit from the House of Glücksburg, which has ruled Norway since 1905. Her father became King Haakon VIII after the death of Europe’s oldest reigning monarch, who was 89 and had reigned for 35 years.
How Ingrid Alexandra grew into a crown princess
She arrived on Wednesday, 21 January 2004, and the palace did not exactly play it cool. Her father, then crown prince, introduced his daughter to the country and sounded like every besotted new dad in history. Haakon said:
“She is the most beautiful newborn baby in the world.”
Her upbringing has not been all tiaras. Her father is an avid skier and surfer, and she trained with him before winning Norway’s national junior surfing title. In 2014 her parents pulled her and her brother out of the public school system for a private international school, breaking royal tradition, with the palace saying a future queen needed flawless English.
Ingrid Alexandra on skipping queen school
She spent five years at the International School of Oslo before returning to the state system and finishing at Elvebakken. On her 18th birthday, Friday, 21 January 2022, she gave her first major television interview, and asked what she had picked up from her grandfather, Ingrid Alexandra said:
“I have not gone to any queen school, but I learn a lot from him through everything he does and things he talks about. I think that in our role, the most important thing is not to be told what to do, but rather to make it your own.”
She has since completed military training as a future commander-in-chief of the armed forces. At her 18th birthday gala at the Royal Palace in Oslo, attended by seven reigning royal houses, she wore a diamond-and-pearl tiara once owned by her great-great-grandmother, Princess Ingeborg of Sweden. King Harald used his speech to tell her:
“Be yourself. And trust that it is enough, always.”
What is next for Norway’s crown princess
In June 2026 her mother Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s health took a serious turn while she was recovering from a lung transplant. Ingrid Alexandra, who had been studying in Sydney since July 2025, came home and moved to the University of Oslo, near her mother and the brothers she has called her “safety net”, Prince Sverre Magnus and Marius Borg Hoiby.
Around the same time, parliament began work on a constitutional reform that would let her take on regency duties of her own. As heir presumptive, she is expected to submit her own written oath to parliament in the coming weeks, while her father swears his constitutional oath in person.
