Donald Trump will be sworn in as the 47th president of the United States on 20 January.
The ceremony will take place in Washington DC and marks the peaceful transition of power from Joe Biden to Mr Trump – who is returning to the White House for a non-consecutive second term.
Here is your guide to everything we know so far about the events that will happen during the day and night.
When to expect oaths of office and Trump’s speech
The inauguration ceremony will take place at the US Capitol building.
Vice president-elect JD Vance will be first to take his oaths of office on 20 January, followed by Mr Trump.
This typically happens at around midday local time (about 5pm UK time).
John Roberts, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, is expected to administer the oath to the incoming president, in line with tradition.
Mr Trump will hold up his right hand and place his left on a Bible. The Bible is usually held by the incoming president’s spouse.
Image: The Capitol building on the day of Mr Trump’s inauguration in 2017
Mr Trump will then recite the following: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Mr Trump’s first presidential address of his second term will follow.
The length of the speech varies from president to president, with Mr Trump’s last inaugural speech in 2017 lasting around 17 minutes, while Mr Biden spoke for just over 20 in 2021.
Image: President Joe Biden being sworn in as president in 2021. Pic: AP
The inaugural procession
Following a signing ceremony and an inaugural luncheon, which often features cuisine from the president and vice president’s home states, Mr Trump will lead the inaugural procession down Pennsylvania Avenue.
The parade goes from the US Capitol to the White House and is a celebrated and much-anticipated event for millions of Americans across the country.
The procession will begin at approximately 3pm local time (around 8pm UK time). The day ends with a series of inaugural balls across Washington DC.
How to get tickets or watch from home
The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies makes a limited number of inauguration tickets available to the public through members of Congress in the weeks leading up to the event.
Tickets are free and allow people to watch the ceremony on the grounds of the US Capitol as the president and vice president are sworn in.
Viewers will be able to watch live coverage of inauguration day on Sky News.
For those wanting to want the action elsewhere, all major US broadcast networks will cover the event live including NBC, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, CSPAN, Fox News and PBS.
A live stream of the event will also be available through the White House.
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The inaugural addresses of past US presidents
World leaders invited for first time
Outgoing president Mr Biden has confirmed he will attend the inauguration later this month.
In an opinion article for The Washington Post at the beginning of January, he wrote that he was “determined to do everything [he] can to respect the peaceful transfer of power and restore American traditions”.
He said he had also invited Mr Trump to the White House on the morning of the inauguration.
It is also customary for living former presidents to attend the ceremony, with Mr Biden having already ordered flags be flown at half-mast to honour Jimmy Carter – who died on 29 December at the age of 100 – to the annoyance of Mr Trump.
Image: Mr Trump has invited world leaders to the inauguration for the first time. Pic: Reuters
Republican Mr Trump is sure to put his own mark on the event.
He is already the first president-elect to invite world leaders to his inauguration, including China’s President Xi Jinping.
Experts have suggested the Chinese president is unlikely to attend, but at least one foreign leader, the Argentinian President Javier Milei, is planning to be there.
Who will perform?
Every inauguration attracts famous faces to perform – whether it is singing the national anthem The Star-Spangled Banner on the steps of the Capitol, or taking to the stage at the various inauguration balls throughout the evening.
Beyonce, Lady Gaga and rock band 3 Doors Down have all performed in the past.
Back in 2017, Mr Trump seemed to struggle to secure celebrity attendees, with a host of names including Elton John, Celine Dion and Andrea Bocelli publicly declining an invitation.
Country singer Toby Keith ended up as the biggest name in the final line-up, while classical singer Jackie Evancho, a former America’s Got Talent contestant, sang the national anthem.
There is currently no confirmation about who will be performing at the inauguration this time around, but the singer Kid Rock has been a vocal supporter of the president-elect.
Singer Mary Millben also stands a chance of performing, having sung the national anthem at both Mr Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally and the Republican National Convention back in July.
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From 2021: Lady Gaga and J Lo perform at Biden inauguration
Heightened inauguration day security
US officials have said they are not anticipating any major disruptions or protests on the day of the inauguration.
“At this time, we are not tracking any credible or specific threats associated with these events,” Dave Sundberg, the assistant director in charge of the FBI Washington field office, said.
Image: Trump’s inauguration in 2017
The District of Columbia National Guard will deploy roughly 7,800 soldiers for security, which includes traffic control and patrolling underground stations.
Thousands of federal agents, police and other law enforcement officials will also be on hand.
In the build-up to the inauguration, authorities said they are having to deal with a string of high-security events in the nation’s capital.
Former president Jimmy Carter’s state funeral will take place on Thursday 9 January, while Mr Trump is planning to hold a major victory rally at the Capital One Arena the night before the inauguration on 19 January.
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Donald Trump sworn in as president back in 2017
Stark differences to Biden inauguration
Mr Trump’s inauguration will stand in stark contrast to President Biden’s four years ago, an event that the president-elect skipped amid his false claims that the election had been stolen from him.
More than 1,000 people were later charged in connection with the riot.
As a result of the COVID pandemic and subsequent violence from the Capitol riots, the National Mall, where thousands traditionally gather to see the new president sworn in – was closed to the public on Mr Biden’s inauguration day.
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Joe Biden sworn in as president back in 2021
In addition to events during the day, a prime-time inauguration day TV programme entitled Celebrating America was hosted by Tom Hanks on the evening of 20 January 2021.
The programme was shown by all major broadcasters and included performances by Foo Fighters, John Legend, and Bruce Springsteen from iconic locations across the country.
There is no confirmation if a similar programme will be aired following Mr Trump’s inauguration this year.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has apologised to Donald Trump over an anti-tariff advert featuring a clip of Ronald Reagan.
Speaking at the Asia-Pacific summit in South Korea, he also said he had reviewed the commercial and told Ontario Premier Doug Ford not to air it.
“I did apologise to the president,” Mr Carney said on Saturday, confirming earlier comments made by the US president on Friday.
“I told [Doug] Ford I did not want to go forward with the ad,” he added.
The private conversation with Mr Trump happened at a dinner hosted by South Korea’s president on Wednesday.
The commercial, commissioned by Mr Ford, included a quote from Republican former president Ronald Reagan saying that tariffs cause trade wars and economic disaster.
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TV advert deepens trade rift between Trump and Canada
In a post on Truth Social, he wrote: “Because of their serious misrepresentation of the facts, and hostile act, I am increasing the Tariff on Canada by 10% over and above what they are paying now.”
The ad by the Ontario government has a voiceover of Ronald Reagan criticising tariffs on foreign goods while saying they cause job losses and trade wars.
The video uses five complete sentences from a five-minute weekly address recorded in 1987, but edited together out of order.
The ad does not mention that the former US president was explaining that tariffs imposed on Japan by his administration should be seen as a sadly unavoidable exception to his basic belief in free trade as the key to prosperity.
Meanwhile, Mr Carney said his talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday were a turning point in relations after years of tensions.
He also met Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi on the sidelines of the summit.
Donald Trump has said he is designating Nigeria a “country of particular concern” as “thousands of Christians” are being killed there.
Posting on Truth Social, he said radical Islamists are committing “mass slaughter” and Christianity is “facing an existential threat” in the West African nation.
The US president said he was asking officials to “immediately look into this matter, and report back to me”.
Mr Trump quoted figures suggesting 3,100 Christians had been killed in Nigeria, but did not state any source for the numbers or timeframe.
He stated: “We stand ready, willing, and able to save our Great Christian population around the World!”
Nigeria now joins North Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan and China on a list of countries “of particular concern” due to violations of religious freedom.
The move is one step before possible sanctions – which could mean a ban on all non-humanitarian aid.
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The Nigerian government has vehemently rejected the claims. Analysts have said that, while Christians are among those targeted, the majority of victims of armed groups are Muslims in the country’s Muslim-majority north, where the most attacks take place.
Mr Trump’s move follows efforts by Republican senator Ted Cruz to get fellow evangelical Christians to lobby Congress over claims of “Christian mass murder” in Nigeria.
Boko Haram – which kidnapped more than 270 schoolgirls in 2014 – is the main group cited in previous warnings by US and international governments.
The group has committed “egregious violations of religious freedom”, according to a 2021 report by the bipartisan US Commission on International Religious Freedom.
It said more than 37,000 people had been killed by Islamist groups in Nigeria since 2011.
Churches and Christian neighbourhoods have been targeted in the past, but experts say Muslims are the most common victims of Boko Haram attacks, which routinely target the police, military and government.
Other groups operating said to be operating in the country include Boko Haram offshoot Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP).
About half of Nigeria’s population is estimated to be Muslim, who mostly live in the north, with roughly the other half following Christianity.
US travellers are currently urged to “reconsider” travel to Nigeria due to a threat of terrorism, crime, kidnapping and armed gangs. The UK advises its citizens along similar lines.
The US is drastically cutting the number of refugees it will allow into the country to 7,500, and giving priority to white South Africans.
The new figure, announced on Thursday in a memo in the Federal Registry, the official journal of the US administration, is a dramatic reduction from last year’s 125,000, set by former president Joe Biden.
No reason was given for the decrease, but the note said the admission of the 7,500 refugees during the 2026 fiscal year was “justified by humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest”.
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The notice posted to the register’s website said the 7,500 admissions would “primarily” be allocated to Afrikaner South Africans and “other victims of illegal or unjust discrimination in their respective homelands”.
It is half the 15,000 total set for 2021 during Donald Trump’s first term in office at the height of the COVID pandemic, which reports said was the previous lowest refugee admissions cap.
Refugee rights groups were quick to condemn the proposal, with International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) president Sharif Aly, saying that by “privileging Afrikaners while continuing to ban thousands of refugees who have already been vetted and approved, the administration is once again politicising a humanitarian programme”.
Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, CEO of Global Refuge, said: “Concentrating the vast majority of admissions on one group undermines the programme’s purpose as well as its credibility.”
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Human Rights First president, Uzra Zeya, called it a “new low point” in US foreign policy, which will “further destabilise front-line states that host over two-thirds of the world’s nearly 43 million refugees, undermining US national security in tandem”.
Image: US President Donald Trump showed South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa printed-out articles in the Oval Office. Pic: AP
In May, Mr Trump confronted South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa in the White House, claiming white farmers in his nation were being killed and “persecuted”.
A video purporting to show burial sites for murdered white farmers was played but was later shown to be scenes from a 2020 protest in which the crosses represented farmers killed over multiple years.
The South African government has vehemently denied that Afrikaners and other white South Africans are being persecuted.
In January, the US president suspended the US Refugee Admissions Programme (USRAP) to, in his words, allow US authorities to prioritise national security and public safety.
During the Oval Office meeting, Mr Ramaphosa said only that he hoped that Trump officials would listen to South Africans about the issue, and later said he believed there is “doubt and disbelief about all this in [Mr Trump’s] head”.