Prince Harry is in the U.K. this week, and Meghan Markle is widely expected to join him with Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet. If that happens, the trip could open the door to a private meeting with King Charles III, a reunion that would be watched closely after years of strain inside the family.
Harry landed in London on July 6 and later headed to Birmingham to promote the 2027 Invictus Games on Friday. The children were not expected to attend any public events, and Meghan had initially been scheduled to join Harry at the countdown, making her possible arrival the part of the trip that now draws the most attention.
What changed is not the official schedule so much as the possibility that Meghan could now come after all. That matters because Archie and Lilibet could see Charles for the first time in four years, turning what begins as a sports appearance for Harry into a rare chance at a family encounter that has not happened in public view for a long time.
The path to that possibility has been clouded by a dispute with the U.K. government over Harry's security arrangements, which had seemed to make Meghan coming to the U.K. at all remote. Reports in The Telegraph and The Mirror said she will come with the two children but will not appear in public, while Buckingham Palace and Meghan's office have declined to say whether the king will meet them.
That silence leaves the key detail unresolved even as Harry is already on the ground. Relations between him and the royal family have been poor since he and Meghan stepped back as working royals in 2020 and relocated to California, and the couple's public remarks have only deepened the distance. In 2021, Meghan said in the Oprah Winfrey interview that she had been denied professional help by the palace while feeling suicidal when pregnant with Archie, and Harry and Meghan said a royal household member had asked how dark their unborn son's skin would be. Queen Elizabeth II responded that some recollections may vary.
Harry later widened the gap again in Spare in 2023, writing that he and Prince William asked their father not to marry Camilla and that they blamed her in part for the breakdown of their parents' marriage. He also accused Prince William of physically attacking him, saying William pushed him to the ground during a dispute about Meghan and later apologized. Yet Harry has also signaled he wants the door left open, telling the last year that he would love reconciliation with his family and telling last September that his conscience is clear.
The latest sign came in September 2025, when Harry and Charles held a private tea at Clarence House, their first in-person meeting in 19 months. Harry later called reports that the reunion was cold categorically false. That is why this week matters: if Meghan does arrive quietly with Archie and Lilibet, the trip may produce the first private contact between Charles and his grandchildren in four years. If she does not, the chance slips away again, and the family remains where it has been for years — close enough for speculation, too divided for certainty.
