Norway’s royal family gathered at King Harald V’s bedside at Oslo University Hospital on Thursday after the royal palace announced that the 89-year-old monarch’s condition had turned grave, an announcement that gripped the country. “His Majesty the King’s health condition is extremely serious,” the palace said, offering no further detail.
Queen Sonja, the king’s wife, and Crown Prince Haakon, his 53-year-old son and heir, canceled all royal engagements and spent much of Thursday at his side, joined by other relatives. Late in the afternoon the palace issued a briefer update: the king’s condition was unchanged. It came shortly after Haakon, his wife, Crown Princess Mette-Marit, and their two adult children, Princess Ingrid Alexandra and Prince Sverre Magnus, were seen leaving the hospital.
Harald has spent 10 days in the hospital since his admission on August 17, 2026, with hemolytic anemia, a disorder that destroys red blood cells far faster than normal and leaves patients fatigued and short of breath. He was taken in for fluid retention caused by the cortisone he had been prescribed. On Sunday, the palace said antibiotics were treating a bacterial infection in his blood and that he had responded. By Thursday, his health had deteriorated.
A Somber Day in Palace Square
Outside the palace in central Oslo, Norwegians set down bouquets and lingered. Crowds drifted through Palace Square all day, following the comings and goings at the hospital across the city, while Norwegian public television tore up its schedule to stay with the story. None of the royals spoke publicly.
Kaspara Bolstad, 24, one of the well-wishers at the palace, called Harald “a very steady and warm king,” she told AFP, adding that Norwegians see him as a unifying figure whether or not they back the monarchy. Magnus Skaugseth, 27, another Oslo resident who came to the palace, said the king had championed inclusive values and had served as a counterweight in an age of division and polarization.
Engagements Canceled Across Norway
The disruption spread well beyond the palace. Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store scrapped a work trip to Germany, where he had been expected to meet German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Thursday. Store said the news had affected him deeply and that he stood with the whole country in sending warm thoughts to the king and the royal family, adding that he was confident Harald was in good and compassionate hands.
In Rome, where they had been on a study visit that included an audience with Pope Leo, Norway’s bishops ended the trip early and were expected back in the country on Thursday. Caroline Vagle, a royal reporter for the magazine Se og Hor, described the palace’s statement as dramatic, noting that the royal household has for years been strikingly guarded about Harald’s health, even during hospital stays and treatment. A whole nation, she said, is deeply worried and saddened for a much-loved king.
A King Who Refused to Step Aside
Harald ascended the throne in 1991 and is Europe’s oldest reigning monarch. Health troubles have mounted in recent years, forcing him to pare back official duties, but he has consistently ruled out abdication, arguing that the oath he swore before the Norwegian parliament binds him for life. Haakon has served as regent while his father is on sick leave.
Doctors fitted him with a pacemaker in 2024 after he fell ill on holiday in Malaysia. In February 2026, an infection and dehydration landed him in a hospital in Tenerife during a private trip with Queen Sonja. The queen, also 89, spent a short spell in a hospital in May 2026 with heart problems.
A Turbulent Year for the Royal House
The king’s decline caps a punishing year for the Norwegian monarchy. Documents released in the United States in January 2026 laid out a steady, at times intimate exchange between Mette-Marit and Jeffrey Epstein, the late US sex offender, from 2011 to 2014 — years after the American financier’s conviction. She later apologized to the king and queen for the three-year friendship, acknowledged poor judgment and told a national television interviewer she wished she had never met him.
A court in June 2026 sentenced her son from a previous relationship, Marius Borg Hoiby, 29, to four years in prison over two rapes and 32 further counts, among them violence against a former partner. He denied the most serious charges and has appealed, and he remains under house arrest wearing an ankle bracelet. Hoiby, who was four when his mother married Haakon and holds no royal role, left the hospital on Thursday after a visit of more than four hours. Princess Astrid, the king’s sister, also came.
Mette-Marit, 53, who has lived with a rare form of pulmonary fibrosis since her 2018 diagnosis, received a lung transplant in June 2026, two days after her son was sentenced.
Through it all, the monarchy has kept broad public support in Norway, owed in large part to Harald himself, a head of state known for an unassuming, modest life and for standing above the country’s political fault lines. On Thursday, that goodwill showed itself in flowers on cold stone and a crowd that would not go home.