Antigua and Barbuda has scrapped the requirement for ministers and officials to swear an oath of allegiance to King Charles, just two months before he is due to visit the Caribbean nation. The move, ordered by republican prime minister Gaston Browne's government, means new officials will now pledge loyalty to the state of Antigua and Barbuda itself rather than to the monarch and his heirs, marking a further step in distancing the country's institutions from the Royal Family.

The change comes ahead of a planned tour by the King and Queen Camilla at the end of October, which will also take in the Bahamas and Guyana, with discussions expected on the legacy of slavery and reparations. Attorney General Sir Steadroy Benjamin called the change overdue, while any full removal of the King as head of state would require a public referendum, the outcome of which remains uncertain. Antigua and Barbuda, independent since 1981 but still a Commonwealth realm, follows Grenada, which dropped its own oath last year; the King is expected to use the visit to encourage "de-realming," where nations remain in the Commonwealth without him as head of state, as Barbados did in 2021. The Bahamas, by contrast, has no plans to remove him.