Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s plan to bring their children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, to the United Kingdom has been thrown into doubt due to security concerns, as Harry “continues to explore every available option,” the couple’s spokesperson said.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex had been planning to take their children to the U.K., where Harry will mark one year to go until Birmingham hosts the Invictus Games, his adaptive sports tournament for veterans, in July. Initial details, including the fact that the couple was bringing their children, were confirmed by Newsweek and other media outlets on Friday. However, those plans are now in flux after Harry was told he would not be offered police protection.
A spokesperson for the Sussexes told Newsweek in a statement: “The Duke continues to explore every available option to enable the visit to proceed safely and to give his children the opportunity to enjoy the UK.”
However, as of Monday, the Sussex camp had not made any changes to the plan previously briefed to the media, suggesting Archie and Lilibet’s visit may still go ahead.
The dispute has jeopardized a visit that could have allowed Archie and Lilibet to see their grandfather, King Charles III, for the first time in four years. At the same time, both sides appear to have concerns about the other briefing the media, echoing past distrust that Harry referenced in a January 2023 interview with 60 Minutes, when he said there had been “briefing and leakings and planting of stories against me and my wife.”
Robert Jobson, author of The Windsor Legacy, told Newsweek: “Every time Harry comes to town the briefings contradict each other. One voice calls it a peace mission. Another calls it a trap. They cannot all be true. That noise is the sound of a divided crown.”
Why It Matters
Underneath it all, Newsweek has been told there remains deep mistrust within the Sussex camp about the role of the king’s senior aides in the process through which police security is decided.
Briefings and counter‑briefings in the media have also put pressure on a cautious truce that has formed between the two camps over the past year, though relations between Harry and the king are said to remain in a good place.
Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet’s Trip to Britain
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex had been expected to travel from California with Prince Archie, 7, and Princess Lilibet, 5, for a trip beginning in early July. The visit is primarily to promote the 2027 Invictus Games in Birmingham, though Harry is also planning engagements with several of his other charities, including Scotty’s Little Soldiers and WellChild.
Alongside the official public engagements was the prospect of Archie and Lilibet seeing their grandfather for the first time since June 2022.
However, the plan has been thrown into doubt following a decision by the government’s Royal and VIP Executive Committee (RAVEC) not to grant the family taxpayer‑funded police protection while in Britain. Several members of the Royal Household sit on RAVEC, though they do not chair the committee.
Newsweek has been told that Harry and Meghan received the news late on Friday, causing significant distress to Harry, and that by Monday morning U.K. time they were still exploring options to make the trip work.
The Security Dilemma
Security has been a long‑running obstacle to Harry’s visits to Britain. After stepping back as a working royal in 2020, his automatic police protection was downgraded, and he later lost a court battle to have it reinstated. He has repeatedly argued that privately funded security cannot replicate the capabilities of police protection under U.K. law.
The safety issues have been compounded by the wider backdrop that Harry believes his father’s senior aides have blocked him from getting an updated threat assessment, which would be his first since 2019.
Harry was told in writing in November that he would receive a new Risk Management Board (RMB) threat assessment and submitted his own risk assessment to feed into the process. He had hoped it would provide an answer in the spring, well ahead of the visit.
On Friday, he was told the new threat assessment had been indefinitely paused without explanation and, hours later, that no protection would be provided for the visit, Newsweek has been told.
Harry already believed Royal Household aides had influenced RAVEC’s decisions on his police protection. He told the BBC in May 2025: “I never asked [the king] to intervene—I asked him to step out of the way and let the experts do their jobs.” The suspension of the RMB assessment has only stoked that suspicion.
“Prince Harry’s programme in the United Kingdom includes both public and private engagements across the country,” the Sussexes’ spokesperson said in the statement. “Safe accommodation is only one element of an effective protective security plan because risk follows the person, not the place.
“The issue has never been accommodation. The issue is whether appropriate and proportionate protective security is being provided throughout the entirety of the visit.
“The independent Risk Management Board that RAVEC itself decided was necessary last November has still not taken place. It is therefore difficult to understand how the proportionality of the current arrangements can credibly be maintained without that independent assessment.”
The palace’s position is that it is up to the Home Office to decide what level of police protection he should receive, while the Sussexes have been offered accommodation within a royal residence.
Reports in the British media have suggested this could be an apartment at Buckingham Palace. Newsweek understands there are additional residences under consideration and no choice yet made on which would best meet their needs, but that publishing the palace as an option has made it less appealing to the Sussexes’ security team, who would rather keep the location a secret.
Alex Bomberg, the chief executive of private security firm Intelligent Protection International, told Newsweek some royal residences afforded greater protection than others.
“Some of the houses on the Windsor Estate are not, massively protected,” he said. “The Windsor Estate, whilst it’s part of palace, it’s also part working farm. There’s lots of buildings over there. My personal view is that Harry should always have armed protection anyway. It should be afforded to him as a birthright. There’s a big kidnap risk there with him and his children for sure.”
Bomberg said reports in the British media about Harry’s specific movements would heighten the security risk, including suggestions that he might visit Althorp, Princess Diana’s family estate in Northamptonshire, to show his children his mother’s grave.
“Some of the potential movements have been published,” Bomberg said. “So, you know, it’s difficult.”
“He’s been using a London firm who employed ex-police officers, ex-RASP [Royalty and Specialist Protection] officers. They’re not armed. As switched on as they are, and they’re very switched on guys, I know some of them, they do not have the intelligence support,” Bomberg said.
If Harry and Meghan decide to come anyway and bring their children, Bomberg said they should try to keep as much information as possible out of the public domain, though this may be a challenge given the media coverage.
“The only way of doing it is making it as covert as possible,” he said. “Don’t release any information in advance and just come. He’s done trips before where, literally, it’s been reported afterwards that he’s done something. So it can be done. The trouble with this is there’s going to be a lot of press intrusion.”
The Impact on Royal Relations
Newsweek understands Harry’s frustrations are currently directed at palace staff rather than his father, while the palace believes it has done what it can to help by offering accommodation.
For Archie and Lilibet, if the trip is canceled, the cost could be the loss of the opportunity to build a relationship with their grandfather.
“Harry’s heart was in the right place. He wanted to bring his children to get to know their grandfather, now they are old enough to remember it,” Jobson said.
“Charles would have wanted that too. A hug from grandchildren he has not seen since June 2022. But this is not a normal family. Everything turns on security. It always has,” he said.
“The grievance is real. Harry lost his court fight over protection in 2025. He asked for the risk to be reassessed. He learned days out that the answer was no. A father who then refuses to expose his children is doing what most fathers would do.”
Jobson said that his “sympathy is limited” because Harry “was warned” before he decided to quit the palace in 2020.
“King Charles asked him, long before he left, whether he had thought it through,” Jobson said. “Harry believed protection would follow as a matter of course. It did not. The obstacles in his path now flow from the deal he chose in 2020.”
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.newsweek.com ’
