From royal exit to return: The story behind Harry and Meghan's Atlantic crossing

Six years after stepping down as working royals, Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle are moving back to the United Kingdom within weeks, British press reported on Thursday.

In a surprise move, Harry, the youngest son of King Charles III, and his wife "plan to leave the United States by the end of the month to settle in a private, non-royal residence, which is said to be located outside London", The Telegraph reported.

Several UK news outlets, including the BBC, reported the couple's two children, Prince Archie, 7, and Princess Lilibet, 5, had already been enrolled in a British school for the start of the school year in early September.

It was reported that the couple had already chosen a new house, but that it would not be one of the many royal residences.

Harry and Meghan have lived in California since stepping down as working royals in 2020 and the children had not seen their grandfather Charles since 2022.

Harry, 41, and Meghan, 45, left the UK for North America in 2020 amid a bitter feud with his family, which worsened as Harry published his tell-all memoir Spare.

A no-holds-barred interview with US talk show host Oprah Winfrey also deepened the rift.

The BBC said the 77-year-old Charles had been made aware on Sunday that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex planned to return to live in the UK.

The monarch welcomes the opportunity to see more of the Sussex family in a private and personal capacity, but there will be no expected change to the couple's official status, the BBC reported.

Why the move back?

While no official reason for the move has been shared, the news comes only weeks after Harry and Meghan paid a short visit to the UK in early July with the children, during which they had a private meeting with Charles.

Harry said last year that he wanted to reconcile with his father, who was diagnosed two years ago with cancer and has been receiving treatment since. The type of cancer has never been revealed.

It was not immediately clear whether Harry's older brother and heir to the throne, Prince William, and his wife, Catherine, had been told of the news. The two brothers have become estranged and reportedly no longer talk.

The UK's Sun newspaper reported the couple would keep their Montecito home in California.

While the couple signed a mega deal with Netflix in 2020 — reportedly worth an unconfirmed US$100 million ($140 million) — many of their projects have struggled to win over audiences.

The new deal signed with the US streaming giant in August 2025 was a looser arrangement, described as a "multi-year, first look deal".

A timeline of Harry and Meghan's time abroad

In January 2020, Harry and Meghan announced they would step down as senior members of the royal family and work to become financially independent. They moved in June that year to California, where Meghan was born and raised.

In 2021, Markle told Winfrey in a bombshell interview that she faced racism from a member of the royal family while she was pregnant with Archie, saying an unnamed person raised concerns about "how dark his skin might be". In the same interview, Harry said his father no longer took his calls.

She was pregnant with their second child at the time of the interview, and Lilibet was born in June that year.

The couple were visiting London in September 2022 when Queen Elizabeth died, and they stayed for her funeral.

In 2023, Harry published his memoir, which detailed his relationships with his family members.

Among the most notable revelations, Harry says his brother William, now heir to the British throne, knocked him to the floor during a 2019 argument at his London home over Meghan.

William called Meghan "difficult," "rude" and "abrasive", Harry said. He also said he and his brother had asked their father not to marry Camilla Parker Bowles, who is now Britain's queen.

Harry attended his father's coronation in May 2023 without Meghan, but did not sit with other senior royals.

In February 2024, Buckingham Palace announced that King Charles had been diagnosed with cancer. The following month, William's wife, Kate, announced she was undergoing preventative chemotherapy after cancer was detected in tests.

Last year, after losing a legal challenge over the level of security he was entitled to in the UK, Harry said he could not see a world in which he would bring his wife and children back to the country.

But he said he would "love a reconciliation with my family".

"There's no point continuing to fight any more, life is precious," he told the BBC at the time.

Upcoming anniversary of Princess Diana's death

News of the couple's surprise return after their painful departure from Britain — dubbed Megxit by the British tabloids — also comes the day after Diana's brother, Charles Spencer, revealed that he had written a book about his sister's life.

Harry has long blamed the media for the death of his mother Princess Diana, who was killed in a Paris car crash in 1997 while trying to shake off the paparazzi.

Swan Song: Diana, My Sister will be published in Britain and other countries on 22 September and translated into 12 languages.

"With the 30th anniversary of Diana's tragic death on the skyline, I've been inundated yet again with requests for interviews about my sister," Spencer said.

"This has convinced me to write down my own thoughts and memories, once and for all," he said, adding many opinions were "based on untruths that have become accepted over time".

Spencer, 62, has remained close to both his nephews, and Harry and Meghan and their children reportedly visited the earl's ancestral home at Althorp, central England, in early July, where they were said to have visited Diana's grave.

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