Prince Harry and Meghan Return to Britain: Private Flight, New Schools, No Royal Duties
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are expected to arrive back in Britain on a private flight from California, six years after stepping away from their roles as senior working royals and relocating to the United States, Hello Magazine reported on 26 August, citing the BBC.
The couple are returning with their two children, Prince Archie, aged 7, and Princess Lilibet, aged 5, who are enrolled to start at a school in the UK in September, according to the BBC and confirmed by USA Today. The family's return has been building in public reporting over the past week. On 19 August, the New York Times, citing two people familiar with the decision, reported that Harry and his family would be moving back to Britain in the coming weeks. People, CBS, NPR and the Associated Press all confirmed the plan on 20 August: an extended stay beginning this autumn, with the children starting school.
One thing the return is not: a return to royal duties. Hello Magazine, NPR and USA Today all report that Harry and Meghan will not resume their positions as working royals — the status they held before January 2020, when they announced they would "step back as senior members of the royal family," as ABC News noted in its timeline of the couple's movements. Working royals carry out official engagements on behalf of the monarch and receive funding through the Sovereign Grant, the annual payment drawn from a percentage of Crown Estate profits. Harry and Meghan will have no part in that apparatus.
Nor will they live in a royal residence. Hello Magazine and USA Today both report that the family will settle in a non-royal home outside London. No further details of the property have been published.
The last time Harry and Meghan lived in Britain full-time was early 2020. They spent time in Canada before establishing a base in Montecito, California. Since then, visits to the UK have been brief and infrequent. This return, timed to the school calendar, is the first sustained relocation since their departure.
For Archie and Lilibet, the move means a first experience of British schooling. Both hold royal titles — prince and princess, formally confirmed after King Charles III's accession in September 2022. Their day-to-day lives in California have been largely private. A UK school term will place them, for the first time, in the country their father's family has served for generations.
