As Prince Harry and Meghan Markle prepare to relocate their family back to the United Kingdom after six years in California, their children are stepping into a country that remains largely unfamiliar to them. Despite their royal heritage, Prince Archie, 7, and Princess Lilibet, 5, have spent nearly their entire lives across the Atlantic, tallying only two documented visits to their father’s homeland.

With the young royals set to begin their British schooling in a private, non-royal residence, here is a complete look back at the few times Archie and Lilibet have set foot on British soil.

Prince Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor was born at London’s Portland Hospital on May 6, 2019. The newborn spent the first six months of his life residing with his parents at Frogmore Cottage on the Home Park estate in Windsor.

In late 2019, the family departed Britain for what was initially framed as an extended holiday in Vancouver Island, Canada. That temporary retreat quickly turned permanent when the Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced in January 2020 that they were stepping back from their roles as working senior royals, eventually establishing their primary household in Montecito, California.

Born in Santa Barbara on June 4, 2021, Princess Lilibet Diana did not travel to the U.K. until her first birthday. In June 2022, Harry and Meghan brought both children to London to participate in Queen Elizabeth II’s historic Platinum Jubilee celebrations, marking 70 years on the throne.

The milestone journey served as Lilibet’s first and only meeting with her great-grandmother and namesake, Queen Elizabeth II, who passed away just three months later in September 2022. In his 2023 memoir Spare, Prince Harry fondly recalled the Queen being charmed by Archie’s formal bows and Lilibet playfully clinging to her shins. The weekend also marked King Charles III’s very first in-person meeting with his granddaughter, described by palace insiders at the time as deeply emotional.

Four years passed before Archie and Lilibet returned to British soil together. In July 2026, the family of four made a quiet visit to the English countryside for a private reconciliation summit with King Charles and Queen Camilla at Highgrove House in Gloucestershire.

The gathering marked the monarch’s first reunion with his California-based grandchildren in four years, cutting through years of high-profile estrangement and transatlantic tensions. During the same summer stay, Harry and Meghan also brought Archie and Lilibet to Althorp House, the Spencer family estate in Northamptonshire, introducing the children to the childhood home and final resting place of their late grandmother, Princess Diana.

Beyond those two brief family trips, security disputes and transatlantic distance have kept the children largely sheltered in North America. Now, as the Sussex family establishes their private residence ahead of the autumn school term, Archie and Lilibet are poised to experience everyday British life for the very first time.