Mike Tindall announces father Phil has died age 80 after decades-long Parkinson's battle

Mike Tindall has announced the sad death of his father, Philip Tindall, after a long battle with Parkinson's disease.

Mike, who is married to Princess Anne’s daughter Zara, paid tribute to his father on the September 23, 2026 episode of his podcast, The Good, The Bad & The Rugby, sharing: "Unfortunately, my dad passed away last week."

He went on to thank Otley Rugby Club in West Yorkshire after players marked Phil's death with a special tribute.

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"Big shout-out to Otley Rugby Club. They played Chester on the weekend, and they did a minute's silence to my dad, who was captain in '72, '73," he said.

"That little moment, I got to watch it. Someone recorded it, sent it to me, and then they wrote a little thing in the programme as well, which I read," he continued. "But thank you very much to Otley Rugby Club for it."

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Mike has kept his dad Phil and mom Linda – whom he has described as a "very stoic, northern lady" – out of the spotlight, but the pair are devoted grandparents to Mike and Zara's children: Mia, Lena, and Lucas. 

Amid the heartache felt by the Tindalls this week, Mike and Zara chose to keep things normal for their young family as their eldest daughter Mia competed at the annual Blenheim Palace International Horse Trials days on September 19, 2026, alongside mom Zara.

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Phil's death comes four months after Mike, a former rugby player and England Captain, shared that Parkinson's had taken a devastating toll on his father.

"My dad is not doing great at the moment," he said in May. "Parkinson's is brutal and there is no let-up from how it attacks the body and changes people."

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Phil made his debut during the 1963-64 season when he was 17, and captained Otley Rugby Club in 1972-73. He raised Mike and his older brother in Otley alongside wife Linda, a social worker.  

His love for the sport led him tto encourage Mike to begin playing, and Mike signed at the age of 18 and made his England debut against Ireland at Twickenham in 2000 at 21.

Phil was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 2003, and it became a major cause for Mike; he has been a patron of Cure Parkinson's since 2018, helping to raise awareness and encourage donations for research into the condition, including through his annual Celebrity Golf Classic.

Phil's health had declined sharply before Mike and Zara's 2011 wedding, with Mike later sharing that Phil had needed a wheelchair for parts of the day as the condition impacted Phil's spine and discs, making moving around increasingly difficult.

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"I didn't really understand the process of how it deteriorated and how it could end up at that point and that's the, sort of, one of the things I regret," Mike told the BBC in 2021.

"I would say he’s had a really sort of tough five years, maybe even longer actually. It's our 10-year wedding anniversary and it was that year that … through his Parkinson's, his spine in his back is obviously curved, and then it caused problems with his discs and then he had to have a wheelchair at the wedding. He could walk some bits of it."