Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have once again managed to conquer the main headlines of the British media with a coup that has shaken a dry August of slow news. Six years after their decision to abandon their role as active members of the British royal family and move to California (United States), the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and their two children, little Archie and Lilibet, have decided to return to live in the United Kingdom.
They are expected to move next September to a private residence that will not be in London, and the two children have already been enrolled in a private school. The news was exclusively reported on Wednesday night by People magazine and the British media outlet The Telegraph. According to their sources, King Charles III was informed last Sunday of the couple’s decision to return to British territory. The move does not imply, at least for the moment, that the couple will resume their royal engagements. Thus, they will remain members of the royalty without official functions, as agreed with the late Queen Elizabeth when they left in March 2020.
After more than six years living in Montecito, California, the family will not move to a royal residence, but rather to a private residence located on the outskirts of London. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex will return for an extended period and will enroll their children Archie, 7, and Lilibet, 5, in a London school this September. Since the news of their return broke on Wednesday night, there have been no comments from the prince’s spokesperson or Buckingham Palace. However, a source close to the Sussexes confirmed the veracity of the reports.
The couple will still retain their mansion in Montecito, near Santa Barbara —according to the press at the time, the price of their 16-room residence was 14.7 million dollars—, where they have resided after leaving England amidst speculations of Prince Harry’s estrangement from his family and especially from his brother, Prince William of Wales —a relationship that is still at a standstill—. The news of their move comes a month after Prince Harry traveled to London with his family and they all reunited with his father, King Charles III. At that time, the King saw his grandchildren and Meghan Markle for the first time in four years during a private meeting at Highgrove House —his idyllic private country residence in Gloucestershire—. According to People, Charles III welcomes the opportunity to see more of the Sussex family in a private and personal setting. While Prince Harry has gradually mended his relationship with his father, the same cannot be said for his bond with his brother: the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and the Prince and Princess of Wales have not seen each other since September 2022, when Queen Elizabeth passed away.
“Those close to them claim that the couple has built the independent life they envisioned: advocating for the causes most important to them and, at the same time, supporting themselves financially, paying their own bills and mortgage, and not relying on public funds,” the American publication states about their new decision. With their return, the couple will have their first base in the United Kingdom since they relinquished the lease on Frogmore Cottage, the residence in Windsor that the late Queen Elizabeth had given them. In March 2023, King Charles asked them to vacate the property to allow his brother, the now ex-Prince Andrew, to occupy the house.
It remains to be seen how the issue of the family’s security in the United Kingdom will be resolved, one of the reasons why Prince Harry did not travel to British soil with his wife and children, and which even motivated him to take the British Government to court after his security measures were modified and he did not have automatic police protection when visiting his country.
Based in the United Kingdom, the prince will be able to dedicate more time to charities he collaborates with, such as Scotty’s Little Soldiers and WellChild, as well as the Invictus Games, the sporting event he founded for wounded servicemen in 2014 and one of the reasons he has traveled to his country most often during this time —in addition to visiting his father on several occasions after he was diagnosed with cancer in 2024, for which he is still undergoing treatment—. For her part, Meghan Markle will continue to run her lifestyle company, As Ever.
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After their wedding held at Windsor Castle in May 2018, it wasn’t long before cracks began to appear in their relationship with the rest of the Windsors. Two years later, they announced they were stepping down from their official duties and moving to the United States, where Meghan Markle was born. Once estranged, they repeatedly criticized the royal family and the monarchy in a widely publicized interview with Oprah Winfrey in March 2021, in which Prince Harry’s wife revealed that an unidentified member of the Windsors had asked how dark their first child Archie’s skin might be. Prince William, heir to the throne, responded by denying that the British royal family was racist. In January 2023, the prince’s memoir, Spare (En la sombra, in Spanish), was published, in which he spoke of fights with his brother, substance use, and his tours in Afghanistan.
In the years the couple resided in the Golden State, they signed a $100 million contract with Netflix for content production on the platform through their production company, Archewell Productions. Since the couple formally broke with the British monarchy in early 2020 to be “financially independent,” both have tried to focus their business in the US, where Markle previously worked in the audiovisual industry and was mainly known for her role in the legal series Suits. But although their first project with the platform, a six-episode documentary about their love story, was a complete success, the subsequent ones did not have the same result. At the end of July 2025, a date was set for the end of the contract between Prince Harry and Meghan Markle with Netflix, a substantial alliance that for five years united the couple with the streaming content platform, with which they launched a total of five projects. It was then said that the door remained open, something that was confirmed just a month later, when they announced that the collaboration would continue, albeit on different terms. It was then that Markle launched As Ever, a lifestyle program associated with a brand, which she still maintains.
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