Six years after stepping away from senior royal roles and relocating across the Atlantic, Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, his wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, and their two young children have touched down on British soil, multiple UK media outlets have confirmed. The unexpected return, first teased to the public last week when news of their planned cross-Atlantic move broke, marks a major shift in the couple’s life after years based in California.
According to reports from The Daily Telegraph and other leading British publications, the family arrived at Birmingham Airport on Wednesday aboard a private jet. Unlike previous short visits back to the UK since their 2018 departure, this trip is set to be an extended stay: the couple has enrolled their children Archie, 7, and Lilibet, 5, in an upcoming academic year at a local private school, and plans to reside in a property in the scenic Cotswolds region of central England.
Notably, the pair has no plans to abandon their existing properties overseas: they will retain their homes in both California, their primary base for the past six years, and Portugal, multiple sources confirmed. This arrangement leaves the door open for continued transatlantic travel and ties to their life in North America.
The couple’s departure from the UK six years ago followed a highly public rift with the House of Windsor, a rift that deepened dramatically after Harry’s 2023 bombshell memoir *Spare* and a revealing 2021 interview with US talk show icon Oprah Winfrey, where the pair levied widespread criticisms of the royal family, including claims of racism and neglect. While Harry has made brief, low-profile visits to the UK in recent months – including a meeting with his father King Charles III, who is currently undergoing treatment for cancer – that encounter has been reported to have thawed relations between father and son. Harry remains estranged from his older brother William, the Prince of Wales and heir to the British throne, and William’s wife Catherine, the Princess of Wales, according to insiders.
A string of key questions surrounding the return remain unresolved, most notably the future of the couple’s security arrangements. Harry has waged a years-long public and legal battle over government-funded police protection during his visits to the UK, after losing his automatic entitlement to publicly funded security when he stepped down from royal duties. In a 2023 court ruling, Harry lost his challenge to the decision that stripped him of the perk, and he has repeatedly stated he cannot feel safe bringing his family to the UK without formal, taxpayer-funded protection. It remains unclear whether any new arrangement has been reached ahead of the extended stay.