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The Australian prime minister flew from London to the Scottish Highlands to meet the monarch on the second full day of his visit to the UK.
He was greeted by a Scottish bagpiper and a rousing rendition of Scotland The Brave as he arrived at the military airport of Lossiemouth in northern Scotland for the highly anticipated meeting on Saturday.
Mr Albanese and his partner, Jodie Haydon, presented the king with a framed photo of his visit to Australia with Queen Camilla in October 2024.
The royals can be seen in the picture signing the visitor’s book at Parliament House in Canberra.
The Prime Minister later posted a photo os his Balmoral meeting on social media with the caption: “An honour to meet with you today, Your Majesty.”
It was his fourth audience with the British monarch and followed the king’s visit to Australia in October last year.
Mr Albanese had also previously met the king in London when he attended the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in September 2022 and visited for the king’s coronation in May 2023.
Mr Albanese will go to Liverpool for the Labour Party’s annual conference on Sunday.
On Friday, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer told a global conference of centre-left leaders Friday that they must tackle uncontrolled migration and confront “lies” being told about their countries by hard-right politicians seeking to win over voters.
The meeting in London included Mr Albanese and Canadian premier Mark Carney and comes as right-wing populism rises around the world and with Republican Donald Trump back in the White House.
“I don’t accept that argument that somehow our politics is dying out,” said Starmer, noting his landslide election win in July 2024 and the more recent victories of Carney and Albanese.
“But I do accept that it is now time for social democrats to confront directly some of the challenges and some of the lies, frankly, that have taken root in our societies,” he added.
Mr Starmer’s Labour Party has fallen behind the anti-immigrant Reform UK party in national polls since he secured a landslide general election victory in July last year.
The British leader’s speech saw him try to lay out a more optimistic view of the future than the one put forward by Reform, headed by anti-European Union firebrand Nigel Farage.
Farage, a supporter of Trump, regularly claims that Britain is “broken” and Starmer has started to accuse him of being unpatriotic as he tries to claw back support.
The UK PM told the conference that Britain’s next general election, expected in 2029, would be a “battle for the soul of the country” and a straight fight between Labour and Reform.
He said the “defining political choice of our times” was between “a politics of predatory grievance” or one of “patriotic renewal”.
