Massive street pageant to celebrate Queen's Platinum Jubilee announced

A spectacular street parade featuring a giant dragon puppet, marching bands, troops and veterans will be among celebrations for Queen Elizabeth's Platinum Jubilee next year.

The street pageant will travel down The Mall near Buckingham Palace, capping off four days of events marking the Queen's 70-year reign.

The Duke of Edinburgh's legacy will be included with a carnival-style imagination of the coronation, an event he helped to plan in 1953.

Every decade of the Queen's reign will be celebrated within the parade which will feature horses and corgis to reflect her passions.

The announcement of the pageant comes just weeks after Buckingham Palace unveiled plans for the Queen's Platinum Jubilee.

The Queen and members of the royal family will travel around the UK attending a range of events to mark the milestone.

The four-day celebrations will begin with Trooping the Colour, to be held in full for the first time since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, on Thursday June 2.

The Platinum Jubilee Pageant will take place on the final day of the festivities, Sunday June 5.

The spectacle will also signal a "reopening ceremony for the United Kingdom" following months of lockdowns due to the global health crisis pageant co-chairman Nicholas Coleridge, said.

"Through the fusion of ceremonial and pageantry with razzmatazz and festival, we intend to create a spectacle that is at once energising and memorable and a fitting tribute," he said.

Plans for the pageant were revealed overnight at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

It will be made up of 5000 military personnel and volunteers from across the UK and the Commonwealth.

Trapeze artists and acrobats will also feature along with a specially-written fairy story There Once Is A Queen, by author Sir Michael Morpurgo, which will be brought to life throughout the day.

The three-act pageant will begin with serving troops and veterans marching along The Mall in front of Buckingham Palace.

The second act, Celebration, will feature a puppet dragon larger than a double-decker bus with a wingspan the width of The Mall.

Details of the pageant's third act, the finale, are being kept secret for now.

Organisers say the pageant's budget, somewhere between $18 million and $27 million, will be privately funded through corporate partners, businesses and individuals.

On February 6, 2022, Her Majesty the Queen will mark 70 years on the British throne becoming the only sovereign to reach the milestone.

She will be aged 96 when the Platinum Jubilee celebrations are held.