The First Couple of Maldives has departed on an official visit to the United Kingdom.

President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih and First Lady Fazna Ahmed departed to UK from Velana International Airport (VIA), on Wednesday evening.

During the visit, the President and the First Lady will attend the coronation ceremony of King Charles III and Queen Camilla.

The coronation ceremony is scheduled to be held this weekend.

King Charles, along with his wife Camilla, will be crowned at London's Westminster Abbey in a historic event whose origins date back some 1,000 years, and involving thousands of military personnel in a mile-long procession through central London.

Some 7,000 armed forces personnel will be involved in ceremonial duties, with more than 4,000, including military bands, taking part in a procession from the Abbey back to Buckingham Palace where the newly-crowned king and queen will be given a royal salute in the gardens.

The royals will, as is traditional, wave to the crowds from the balcony of Buckingham Palace afterwards, and there will be a flypast by military aircraft.

As the palace has previously acknowledged, the service itself will be different to that of Queen Elizabeth seven decades ago, reflecting the different eras.

There will be only 2,300 guests in Westminster Abbey as opposed to the 8,000 who watched in 1953, although 100 heads of state will still be present, and it will be much shorter.

Heads of state from nations with whom Britain has full diplomatic ties were invited, as were representatives of British realms and overseas territories. Invitations were issued to senior diplomats, rather than heads of state, for North Korea and Nicaragua.

British source has said that the country has not issued invitations to the coronation ceremony to the leaders of Russia, Belarus, Iran, Myanmar, Syria, Afghanistan and Venezuela.