Why Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Missed Trooping the Colour 2025

On Saturday, the Prince and Princess of Wales and their three children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis, all attended the 2025 Trooping the Colour event to celebrate King Charles’s birthday. The annual event is the public celebration of the king, though his actual birthday is in November.

The family looked festive, with the boys matching their father’s red military uniform with red ties complimenting their navy suits. Charlotte wore a pale blue look mirroring her mother, Kate Middleton, who had on a Catherine Walker coat dress modeled after a prior outfit worn by the late Princess Diana.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex were not at the event, having last publicly attended in 2019. Meghan Markle and Prince Harry moved to Montecito, California, in 2020, where they have been raising their two children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet. The couple has been unwilling to return to visit the U.K. together given concerns around security. Prince Harry has been fighting in court to have automatic police security re-established for his family, but they lost their appeal on the matter in April of this year.

Last week, a source told People that the couple has different perspectives on how to move forward given the rift between Harry and King Charles. The king has been receiving cancer treatments, increasing the tension.

“They’re aware of everything going on in England, but they’re being left out of the details—there’s clearly no trust,” said the insider, adding that Meghan is “focused on the future,” and “is very business about it.”

The Duchess of Sussex “wishes her husband could feel less burdened by the past and more present in the life they’ve built together.”

But it has been “difficult for him to even get proper updates about his dad,” which is painful for the duke.