Prince Harry and Meghan Markle make 1st joint appearance after U.K. return

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle made their first joint appearance in front of a crowd since moving back to England last month, six years after they gave up their royal duties and relocated to California.

The royal couple greeted cheering crowds at the Community Recording Studio in Nottingham, in central England, which uses music, performance and athletic programs to help young people build confidence and develop practical skills.

They were met with a warm applause and cheers from the crowd; one woman shouted, “We love you, Duchess Meghan, we love you,” the Associated Press reported.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex posed for selfies, hugged and shook hands with fans, and spent time speaking with members of the public.

The visit was the first of several scheduled events in the British city. Nottingham is where they made their first public appearance after announcing their engagement in 2017.

After the Community Recording Studio, the couple will go to Himmah, the region’s largest food bank and Epic Partners, which offers sports, education and mentoring programs for disadvantaged youth.

The day also included an announcement that features Harry and Meghan’s titles as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and a prearranged media pool reporting on their movements.

The couple are non-working members of the Royal Family, and their public appearances are not considered official engagements undertaken on behalf of the Crown.

In a letter sent on behalf of King Charles III, Harry’s father, to U.K. government officials shortly after Harry and Meghan returned to the country permanently, the palace reaffirmed that the pair would not use their titles “His Royal Highness” or “Her Royal Highness” and that any charity work they do would be in a private capacity.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex gave up their royal duties and moved to California more than six years ago, where they secured lucrative contracts with Netflix and Spotify through their media company, Archewell Productions. Several years later, Harry’s best-selling memoir Spare, published in 2023, deepened a growing chasm among the royals after it aired private details about the family.

Their relationship with the Royal Family remains strained, though Harry has recently expressed an interest in reconciliation so he could spend more time with his father, who is being treated for an undisclosed form of cancer.

Harry and Meghan visited the U.K. in July, where they met with King Charles and Queen Camilla at Highgrove House, a country estate west of London, Buckingham Palace confirmed.

When Charles’ cancer diagnosis was revealed in 2024, Harry expressed a desire to spend time with his father.

“Life is precious. I don’t know how much longer my father has,” he told the BBC last May. “He won’t speak to me because of this security stuff, but it would be nice to reconcile.”

Last week, Prince Harry revealed that he struggled with his mental health and slipped into a depression after leaving England and moving to Canada in 2019. He, his wife and their eldest child, Archie, spent a short time on a private estate on Vancouver Island before relocating to California.

“It was myself, my wife and our son Archie, and we moved to Canada to get some space away from everything just to be able to think,” Harry said, according to People and The Hollywood Reporter.

“Being in Canada, away from the stressful environment where presumably my body was just pumped full of adrenaline, within two or three days, I experienced this adrenaline crash, something that I’d never experienced before,” he continued.

Harry is also embroiled in a years-long battle to have his taxpayer-funded security reinstated, which was cancelled when the couple moved away from official royal duties. Now that they have returned to England, a fresh assessment of their entitlement to government protection is underway.

— with files from the Associated Press and Global News’ Katie Scott