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Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, stepped down from their responsibilities as senior working royals in 2020 and settled across the pond in Montecito, California, before deciding to move back to the United Kingdom.
“It was never walking away, it was stepping back rather than stepping down. It was a really difficult environment as I think a lot of people saw,” Harry clarified on The Late Late Show With James Corden in 2021. “It was destroying my mental health. … I did what any husband and what any father would do, which is [say], ‘I need to get my family out of here,’ but we never walked away. As far as I’m concerned, whatever decisions are made on that side, I will never walk away.”
After six years abroad, news broke in August 2026 that Harry and Meghan planned to relocate to England with kids Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, who were already enrolled in a local school for the fall semester.
While neither the Duke nor Duchess of Sussex have publicly addressed their decision, a source exclusively told Us that Harry was “not as happy” living in the United States as his wife. (Meghan was born and raised in California before moving to England upon her May 2018 wedding to Harry.)
“They aim to be somewhere outside of London, not in, like, the city proper,” the insider told Us. “They are open to a new chapter.”
Looking forward, Harry and Meghan will reportedly keep their home in California as well as their vacation property in Portugal.
Even before the move, Harry had been candid about stateside life. Scroll below for more:
Down-to-Earth Life
During Harry’s February 2021 appearance on The Late Late Show, the prince offered a rare glimpse of the family’s life abroad.
“Depending on how the day’s been, we do Archie’s tea, give him a bath, read him a book, put him down, go downstairs,” Harry said. “Meg might cook a meal, might order a takeaway, go upstairs, sit in bed, turn the TV on, watch some Jeopardy!, maybe watch a little bit of Netflix.”
Staying in Touch With Relatives
Harry virtually stayed connected to his grandparents Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, who died in 2022 and 2021, respectively, after the cross-continential move.
“We’ve Zoomed them a few times,” Harry told James Corden in 2021. “They’ve seen Archie running around. My grandfather, instead of pressing ‘Leave Meeting,’ he just [closes the laptop]. … I’m like, ‘OK, bye.’”
While the move also sparked friction between Harry and his father, King Charles III, and his brother, Prince William, the Spare author remained particularly close to his cousin Princess Eugenie.
Making a New Life
During his Late Late Show appearance, Harry revealed his family’s next steps.
“[It’s] a slightly different version but a continuation of what we were doing back in the U.K.,”the military veteran said in 2021. “That’s what our life, my life is always going to be about. Meghan signed up to that, and the two of us enjoy doing that. Try to bring some compassion and try to make people happy and try to change the world in any small way that we can.”
Since then, Harry and Meghan inked a multimillion-dollar Netflix deal to produce a slate of original content that came to an end in 2025. They’ve also served as patrons to various organizations and Meghan, for her part, launched lifestyle brand As Ever.
A Freeing Home Base
“I’ve now moved my whole family to the U.S. … that wasn’t the plan, but sometimes you’ve got to make decisions that put your family first and your mental health first,” the duke said on the “Armchair Expert” podcast in 2021. “Living here now, I can actually lift my head and I feel different. My shoulders have dropped, so has [Meghan’s], and you can walk around feeling a little bit more free. I get to take Archie on the back of my bicycle. There was very rarely a day that went by without at least one paparazzi jumping out from behind a car or something.”
Home is Where the Heart Is
“You know, home—home for me, now, is, you know, for the time being, in the states,” Harry told Hoda Kotb on the Today show in 2022. “We’ve been welcomed with open arms,” he says, sharing that he’s “got such a great community up in Santa Barbara.”
Embracing the California Lifestyle
“We have created a fantastic life here in California, which by the way, is beautiful,” Harry gushed on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert in 2023. “America is a great place to live.”
A Forever Home?
During a 2024 appearance at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit, Harry hinted that he could picture living in California for good.
“I very much enjoy living here and bringing my kids up here,” he revealed. “I feel as though it’s the life that my mom wanted for me … to be able to do the things I’m able to do with my kids that I undoubtedly wouldn’t be able to do in the UK, it’s huge. I’m hugely grateful for that.”
Harry’s mother, Princess Diana, died in a fatal car accident in Paris in 1997. She was 36.
Why He Moved Back to the U.K.
In a wide-ranging October 2026 interview with GQ, Harry opened up about his return to England.
“Having been here for six years now, and only being able to go back to the U.K. for short periods of time, to actually have my whole family there with me, the place that I grew up, wanting to be able to show my kids where I grew up and have them have the experiences to some extent that I had,” he acknowledged. “It’s good to be outside of the U.S. for the next few months, perhaps. Let things settle down for a bit and then we work it out from there. But we’ve had plans in the past, and I think for lots of people, it’s like, if you’re going to make a big move like this, that’s going to take a lot of planning. For us, it was very short.”
For Harry, he also wanted to enroll Archie and Lili in a local British school like he attended growing up.
“Being able to put the kids in a British school has meant a lot to me. I didn’t know how important it was to me,” he said. “I always thought it was going to be something that we would try and do, but now they’ve been in school for two weeks. They’re loving it and it’s just giving them a whole different experience.”
Harry continued, “I’m not criticizing American schools. But I think for kids at seven and five, to be able to have that comparison and to have two completely different cultural experiences is so important today. But yeah: To be back closer to my family and to be back on U.K. soil for longer than a few days or a week here or there. It’s nice to be back.”
