Prince Harry’s Summer UK Visit Should Be Bonding Moment With Charles
Prince Harry is planning a visit to Britain this summer to promote the Invictus Games and a royal expert told Newsweek a meeting with King Charles III would boost the chances of a broader reconciliation.The Duke of Sussex said in a September interview that over the following 12 months “the focus really has to be on my dad” and a new potential opportunity to see his father is approaching just less than a year later.Seeing the king is not the trip's official purpose though as he heads to Birmingham to mark one year to go before the 2027 Invictus Games, his Olympics-style tournament for wounded veterans, which is to be hosted in Britain's second-largest city.Prince Harry's relationship with his family has been strained for almost 10 years since Meghan Markle's arrival on the royal scene led to arguments over whether the royals were doing enough to help her deal with what the Sussexes described as a hostile U.K. media.Prince Harry's UK Visit and Relations With the KingOne possibility already being discussed in the U.K. press is whether Charles might invite the Sussexes to Balmoral in the summer."I think the King should invite Harry and Meghan this summer," British royal commentator Afua Hagan told Newsweek. "Whether they'll go remains to be seen but I think he should invite them and I think he probably will."One advantage of that arrangement would be that an invite from the king would likely help Harry persuade the Home Office to grant him police protection, which he argues is necessary due to the level of threat he says exists in Britain coupled with the fact private security teams do not have the same powers as U.K. police and cannot carry guns.Harry and Meghan were stripped of their police bodyguards in 2020 after they quit the palace but have at points been given a team on a one-off basis for events to which the royals have invited them, such as Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee.A trip to Balmoral though, might involve bumping into Prince William, who has been widely reported to be the most adamant that the Sussexes should not be given a route back to Britain.If Balmoral does not prove to be a realistic prospect, Harry's best bet would likely be to catch the king before he heads up to Scotland. Finding a space in the monarch's packed diary is among the challenges he would face.Harry's Invictus EventsHarry will have a packed program of Invictus events taking place in Birmingham after he lands in Britain and, as with past visits, media headlines will focus on whether he meets his father. Sources whom Newsweek spoke to said it was too early to say whether this would be possible.Past Invictus One Year to Go events have been brief, confined to a single day of engagements, but Newsweek understands this year's will be a little longer.On paper, that could give father and son more time to find a window to meet but geography is also a factor as Birmingham is around 90 minutes by train from London.The monarch will likely also be busy. One reason why King Charles visited America to mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in April rather than for the main celebration on July 4 is because the period before Balmoral is a busy time for him."There could be way more time for the King and Harry to find time in the diaries to be able to sit down and then to have a conversation," Hagan said."I think that this is a prime opportunity for them to have those conversations, sow those seeds of reconciliation. I definitely think they are going to have a face-to-face meeting."Not Meeting Would Be a 'Very Bad Sign'On Harry's last trip to Britain, in September, he tea with the king for less than an hour at Clarence House, Charles and Queen Camilla's London residence. That triggered a wave of U.K. headlines suggesting reconciliation might in fact be possible.Harry's visit may therefore provide an opportunity for royal watchers to assess whether talk of a reconciliation is meaningful and Hagan said it will be a "very bad sign" if there is no meeting.However, she said: "I think reconciliation will happen. I'm confident it will happen. I've always said it's going to happen. It's just going to take time. I'm not saying that we're going to see William and Harry skipping hand-in-hand down The Mall anytime soon but they are going to reconcile. I maintain that William will not ascend to the throne without him and Harry at least having had a conversation."And she urged them to heal their rift within the king's lifetime: "It's going to have to accelerate because we all know that the king is only getting older, time is only marching on, and so they are going to have to get their house in order."Prince Harry's Police SecurityHarry has been fighting for the return of his police protection team ever since it was stripped from him in 2020 but he lost two lawsuits against the British government at the High Court, in London, followed by an appeal.His longstanding position has been that it is not safe to bring Meghan and their children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, to Britain without police bodyguards.As a result, Lilibet, who was born in California in 2021, has been to Britain just once, during the queen's jubilee in 2022, coinciding with her first birthday.That trip was also the only time Archie has been back to Britain since the couple flew to Canada in November 2019, ahead of their relocation to America in March 2020. He was born in the U.K. in 2019 and lived the first months of his life there.Prince Harry told BBC News in May 2025 that without police protection he could not "see a world in which I would be bringing my wife and children back to the U.K. at this point."At the time, he suggested the king was blocking his efforts to get his police bodyguards back: "I can only come to the U.K. safely if I am invited, and there is a lot of control and ability in my father's hands."Ultimately, this whole thing could be resolved through him, not by intervening, but by stepping aside and allowing the experts to do what is necessary."Pressure on Prince Harry's Invictus GamesInvictus has had something of a tricky 2026 after the Australian government cut funding to its foundation in the country in May.Good news for the organization came last week as that funding, amounting to A$9 million (around $6.5 million) over three years, was reinstated.Matt Keogh, Veterans' Affairs minister in the Australian government, told TV network 9Now support for veterans in the country was being restructured through a new Veterans' and Families Wellbeing Agency."As we transition in order to maintain continuity and certainty of support services for our veteran community," he said, "we're providing another three years of funding to Invictus Australia."
