Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have reportedly made holiday season plans with Meghan’s mother and are unlikely to join the rest of the royal family for any official Christmas celebrations.
According to multiple outlets, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who moved back to the U.K. in August, will instead be spending the holidays with Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, who lives in California, instead of with Harry’s family.
Harry and Meghan are settling into their new lives. They are believed to have moved into a new home in the Cotswolds — a leafy, rural part of the U.K. around 100 miles outside London — where Archie and Lilibet go to school. On Thursday, the couple are set to take part in their first joint engagement since moving back.
They’ll visit Nottingham, England, on Thursday, the central England city where the couple made their first official joint appearance following their engagement announcement in 2017.
Harry and Meghan also plan to spend Thanksgiving with Ragland, with the location of both holiday celebrations depending on her preference. “They will do whatever Doria wants to do,” an unnamed friend of the couple told the Times of London.
The plans mean that Harry, Meghan and their children won’t spend the holidays with the British royals, who traditionally gather at Sandringham, King Charles III’s country estate in eastern England. The Sussexes haven’t spent Christmas with their British relatives since 2018, when Meghan was pregnant with Prince Archie.
The Times reported that Harry and Meghan “know it would be too awkward and too difficult” to reunite with Harry’s relatives at Sandringham. Hello! magazine’s royal editor, Emily Nash, said seeing Doria was “always the plan.”
It has been widely reported that one of the main reasons the Sussexes moved back to England was to spend more time with Charles, who continues to receive cancer treatment. However, while they haven’t seen Charles since their return, Harry and Charles are in contact by phone, the Times also reports.
Harry and Meghan last saw Charles in July, when they visited the U.K. and had a private afternoon tea with Charles and Queen Camilla at their Gloucestershire home, Highgrove, in southwest England. Before that, Archie and his sister, Princess Lilibet, hadn’t seen their grandfather since June 2022.
Harry and his older brother, Prince William, on the other hand, remain estranged and it is thought they have not spoken for a number of years. Harry told theBBC in 2025, “I would love reconciliation with my family. There’s no point continuing to fight any more, life is precious.”
What happens at Sandringham — and why it matters
Visiting Sandringham at Christmas is a big deal for the British royals. The estate is privately owned by the monarch rather than, say, Buckingham Palace, which is owned by the Crown and held in trust for the country.. It’s where key members of the family, including Charles and Camilla along with William, Kate, Princess of Wales and their three children, come together to celebrate the festive season.
The family opens presents on Christmas Eve, a nod to the family’s German ancestry and on Christmas Day, they all attend a religious service at their local church. The walk to the service is the family’s only big public appearance of the season. In both 2017 and 2018, Harry and Meghan joined their British relatives and were photographed during this outing.
The property was bought in 1862 for the Prince of Wales, who later became King Edward VII. Over the years, the family has alternated between spending the holidays at Windsor Castle and at Sandringham, which became the regular venue in 1988 (while Windsor Castle was being renovated). The gathering has only been canceled twice since then, in 2020 and 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
King George V, Queen Elizabeth II’s grandfather, called it “dear old Sandringham, the place I love better than anywhere else in the world.” It was from Sandringham, in 1932, that he gave the first royal radio Christmas broadcast. In 1957, Elizabeth gave her first televised Christmas broadcast from the same place.
What have Harry and Meghan been up to in England since their return?
Harry and Meghan are reportedly renting a house on a friend’s estate in the Cotswolds near their children’s school. According to the Times, the couple do school drop-offs most days and are “happy and settled” in their new life.
Harry is working on the 2027 Invictus Games, which takes place in July, while Meghan continues to work on her lifestyle brand As Ever and has been reconnecting with friends and acquaintances, including having tea with Malala Yousafzai at Claridge’s hotel in London last week.
