It was not until 7 February 1901 that the Golden Coach was first brought into use, on the occasion of Queen Wilhelmina's marriage to Prince Hendrik.
Ceremonial use on Prinsjesdag (the State Opening of Parliament)
In 1903 it was used for the first time to convey the Queen and Prince to the Binnenhof on Prinsjesdag, for the State Opening of Parliament, thus inaugurating a new tradition. The coach was not, however, used every year: for fear of damage to the Golden Coach, the Glass Coach was at first used in its place in bad weather.
In the first years after the Second World War, the Golden Coach was not used either; in keeping with the austerity and economic hardship of this period, Queen Wilhelmina travelled to the ceremony in an ordinary car. After her investiture in 1948, Queen Juliana reintroduced the tradition of driving to the Binnenhof in the Golden Coach. Since then this tradition was broken once more, in 1974, when owing to the siege at the French embassy, close to the Binnenhof in The Hague, it was deemed wiser to use cars instead.
In 2016 the restoration of the Golden Coach began. Work was completed in 2021. Since 2016 the Glass Coach has been used on Prinsjesdag, except in 2020 and 2021 when no procession was held owing to the coronavirus pandemic and King Willem-Alexander travelled by car instead.
In a video message on 13 January 2022, King Willem-Alexander announced his decision to stop using the Golden Coach.