Ex-Princess Irene of Greece photographed in 2018. Credit: Javier Gayá, CC BY-SA 4.0/Wikipedia
Ex-Princess Irene of Greece has died at the age of 84 in Madrid, Spain. Her sister Queen Sofia had previously cancelled all planned engagements to stay by the side of the former Greek royal.
Irene has reportedly been dealing with cognitive impairment for several years, a condition that has progressively weakened her. Her last public appearance was in February 2025 at the wedding of her nephew, Prince Nikolaos of Greece, in Athens, where she was seen using a wheelchair.
🔴 | Fallece Irene de Grecia, hermana de la reina Sofía. Exiliada desde joven y comprometida con causas humanitarias, dejó frases que reflejan su rechazo al autoritarismo: “La mujer de Mussolini es la guerra”.
Abro hilo 🧵 pic.twitter.com/R9ZZnbSKd5
— Jose Moreno (@Josemn1_) January 15, 2026
Irene’s ties to the former Greek royal family
Princess Irene of Greece, sister of Queen Sofia of Spain and the late King Constantine II of Greece, dies aged 83https://t.co/VZgun0cn7r pic.twitter.com/6zR9am56Kt
— Tatler (@Tatlermagazine) January 15, 2026
Princess Irene (born 1942) was a central figure in the former Greek royal house, the House of Glücksburg. She was the youngest of the three children of former King Paul I and former Queen Frederica of Greece.
She was the youngest sister of the late ex-King Constantine II (the last King of the Hellenes, who passed away in 2023) and Queen Sofia of Spain. After her father died in 1964 and her brother Constantine’s accession to the throne, Irene served as the Heiress Presumptive to the Greek throne. She held this position until the birth of Constantine’s first child, Princess Alexia, in 1965.
Following the fall of the Greek monarchy in 1967, she lived in exile in Rome and later India. Since 1981, she had resided in Madrid at the Zarzuela Palace with Queen Sofia to whom she is exceptionally close. Although she remained a Greek princess for most of her life, she officially obtained Spanish nationality in 2018.