King Charles III raised a dram of whisky at the Mey Highland Games on 1 August 2026, the same week a YouGov poll put his approval as monarch at 68 per cent — the highest figure the tracker has recorded since he took the throne. The poll, published days before the Games, means nearly seven in ten Britons surveyed told YouGov the King is doing a good job.

The King was photographed at the John O'Groats Showground in Caithness, watching Highland sports that included a tug o' war between firefighters, the stone put and the caber toss — the event where competitors balance a long wooden pole and heave it end over end. He also met members of the Wounded Highlanders, a team of injured military veterans who compete in adaptive events at the Games.

The Mey Games have a royal family connection that predates Charles's reign. The first was held in 1970 in the nearby village of Mey to celebrate the late Queen Mother's 70th birthday. The Games now run each year at the John O'Groats showground on the first Saturday of August.

The sight of the King with a glass in hand also carries a political echo. In May 2026, US President Donald Trump announced the removal of all tariffs and restrictions on Scotch whisky imports in honour of King Charles and Queen Camilla's four-day state visit to the United States (BBC News). Trump had imposed a 25 per cent tariff on Scotch whisky imports, which remained in place for 18 months and cost the UK whisky industry an estimated £600 million, according to The Telegraph.

Buckingham Palace said at the time that the King had been informed of Trump's "warm gesture" and would be "raising a dram" to the President (Yahoo Finance). Three months on, the King was pictured doing exactly that — whisky in hand, at a Highland games field his grandmother helped found.

For a monarch who has spent much of his reign managing public perception amid family rifts and a cancer diagnosis disclosed in 2024, the YouGov number lands as a straightforward measure of where the public currently stands. The poll does not explain why approval has risen; it simply records that it has.

What gives the Mey Games appearance its particular texture is the chain of small connections. A games series started for the Queen Mother. A dram the Palace said the King would raise. A tariff lifted, then a whisky sipped at a showground near the castle the Queen Mother loved. None of it was staged as a single narrative. It lands that way anyway.