Six years after their high-profile exit from official royal roles and a very public rift with the British royal family, Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, are preparing to move back to the United Kingdom, multiple sources familiar with the plans confirmed to CNN.
According to reporting from UK-based outlet The Telegraph, the couple — who currently reside in Montecito, California — intend to relocate from the U.S. later this month, and have already enrolled their two young children, 7-year-old Prince Archie and 5-year-old Princess Lilibet, in local British schools ahead of the upcoming academic term. The family plans to settle in a private residence outside of London.
King Charles III, Harry’s father and the reigning monarch, was only formally notified of the couple’s relocation plans this past Sunday. Notably, the proposal was not brought up or discussed during Harry and Meghan’s visit to the UK in July, when the entire family gathered for a rare reunion. A source close to the King told CNN that Charles welcomes the chance to spend more private, personal time with his son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren, but has made clear that the couple’s status as non-working, private members of the royal family will remain unchanged.
The Sussexes first stepped away from official royal duties and relocated to North America in 2020, citing a toxic combination of intrusive tabloid press coverage, systemic racism within British institutions, relentless online harassment, and fractured family dynamics as the core reasons for their exit. The rift only deepened in the years that followed, with the couple sharing a series of explosive claims about the royal family in public interviews and their 2022 Netflix docuseries.
Harry has made only a handful of trips back to the UK since 2020, including high-profile official occasions: the 2022 state funeral of his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, and his father’s coronation in 2023. It was not until September 2023 that Harry and Charles held their first in-person meeting after a 19-month gap in private contact. The July 2024 visit marked another milestone: it was the first time in four years that Charles had met with the entire Sussex family together, hosting the group at his private country estate, Highgrove House in Gloucestershire, alongside Queen Camilla.
During that July visit, Harry carried out a series of commitments for his charitable projects, including events marking the one-year countdown to the next Invictus Games, the international adaptive sporting event for wounded, injured and sick service members and veterans that Harry founded over a decade ago.
The possibility of Harry’s permanent return to the UK has been complicated in recent years by a long-running dispute over personal security. In 2023, Harry challenged the UK government’s decision to remove his taxpayer-funded security detail after he stepped down as a working royal. He ultimately lost the high-profile court case, and told the BBC in an interview afterward that he was “devastated” by the ruling, which he said made it “impossible” for him to bring his wife and children back to live in the UK.
CNN has reached out to representatives for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex to request comment on the relocation plans.