dpPrince Harry and Meghan Markle‘s UK return raises one important question: will they spend the holidays with the royal family?
According to The Sunday Times, it doesn’t seem likely. Despite the fact that Harry’s relationship with King Charles is on much better terms, the Sussexes will not be spending the holidays with Charles and The Firm at Sandringham. Instead, a source suggested that the two will spend Christmas with Meghan’s mom, Doria Ragland, likely in the US.
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“For Thanksgiving and Christmas, they will do whatever Doria wants to do. They would love her to come over to the UK and spend it with them here, but they will be wherever she wants to be,” a friend told the outlet. “They won’t be having Christmas with the royal family. How could that even work? They know it would be too awkward and too difficult. They also know they’re not going to be invited, and they’re not waiting for an invitation.”
Charles reportedly has the final call on who attends the royal family’s holiday festivities. “There is a hierarchy,” a palace source recently explained to OK!. “And the King is the CEO, he’s the boss — what he says go, so it’s better not to put themselves in any difficult position.”
The last time Harry and Meghan spent Christmas with the royals was in 2018.
All of this comes amid reports that Charles is looking to make this holiday season special, because his cancer diagnosis has made him consider how frail life is. In 2025, Us Weekly reported that the king “prioritizes duty, but he’s also a family man who knows his time is precious. He wants a special last Christmas in case it’s his last.”
“He will do everything expected of him and more. His health isn’t the best. They’re taking it day by day,” sources said at the time, and those words seem even more important now, given that Charles has been undergoing treatment for several years.
Could that special Christmas include Harry? No, but on October 5, royal insider Rob Shuter reported that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are expected to meet with Charles and Queen Camilla around the holidays.
“This is not a casual ‘let’s get together sometime,'” one source told Naughty But Nice. “Nobody drops in on the King. If Harry and Meghan are in Charles’s diary, it is because he wants them there. This is deliberate.”
According to people on the inside, both father and son are “determined to keep the fragile reconciliation moving forward,” adding, “The important thing is that there will be another meeting. Charles is making room for his son again, and Harry knows how significant that is.”
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