King Charles has hosted the secretive awards ceremony dubbed the 'Spy Oscars' to celebrate the country’s most outstanding intelligence officers but unlike the Hollywood ceremony the celebrations are behind closed doors and the names of the winners are confidential.

"In a dark world where life often hangs by a thread, these awards are the equivalent of a secret Victoria Cross for acts of gallantry or ingenuity that we will never hear about," according to intelligence expert Rory Cormac, author of Spying and the Crown.

The King, appointed Britain’s Royal Patron of Intelligence Agencies in 2011, has headlined the awards for more than a decade, bestowing honors and bravery citations for work that includes foiling terrorist attacks and international operations. He has long been interested in intelligence work having served in the Royal Air Force and Navy and as Colonel-in-Chief of the Parachute Regiment.

Britain’s three main intelligence agencies include the Secret Intelligence Service known as MI6, the SIGINT experts at GCHQ, and national security experts MI5 which noted the award ceremony on its Instagram account at the time of the King’s coronation in 2023: “We have benefited from His Majesty’s public and private recognition of our work, including through a regular award ceremony in which he recognizes the efforts and achievements of teams working in the UK’s intelligence agencies.”

Other UK agencies include the Joint Terrorism Analysis Center and the military’s Defence Intelligence.

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Britain’s ‘Spy Oscars’‍

In the past, the Spy Oscars have reportedly been held at St James's Palace, the royal residence Clarence House, and MI5's London HQ Thames House with dates and locations varying for security reasons.

It is unclear if Prince William will assume the King’s role. Britain’s future king graduated from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, served with the Blues and Royals Army cavalry regiment and received his Royal Air Force wings before joining the RAF Search and Rescue Force. Like his father, the prince has visited GCHQ, which focuses on electronic surveillance for operations including counterterrorism.

In 2019, Prince William interned at MI5, MI6, and GCHQ for three weeks, secretly working alongside the UK spy agencies.