Fresh dispute over Prince Harry's UK visit as palace and prince clash over Buckingham Palace stay

A breakdown in communication and trust between Prince Harry and the British royal family has surfaced again, this time over the planning of his latest visit to the United Kingdom.

Harry, the younger son of King Charles III, arrived in Britain on Monday for a five-day stay ahead of next year's Invictus Games. The international sporting competition for wounded veterans, which Harry founded in 2014, is scheduled to be held in Birmingham in July 2027.

The central controversy of the visit was where Harry would stay. The BBC initially reported, citing a source close to the prince, that he had accepted an invitation from Buckingham Palace and planned to spend part of his trip there. About an hour later, however, Buckingham Palace flatly denied the claim.

The palace said Harry's team had first declined the invitation, then later indicated he would accept — but by that point the response deadline the palace had set, to allow adequate preparation time, had already passed. Harry's spokesperson pushed back, saying it was "disappointing that the royal family's invitation was withdrawn at the last minute."

Observers inside and outside royal circles say the refusal may be linked to Harry's ongoing litigation against British tabloids. A ruling in the privacy damages lawsuit he and others filed against the publisher of the Daily Mail is expected Tuesday, when his UK schedule gets fully underway. The prevailing view is that the king and the royal family, constitutionally required to remain neutral, drew a line to avoid being entangled in the legal dispute.

Beyond the accommodation dispute, friction over the scope of official police protection also continued. The visit had drawn attention as the first since 2022 at which Harry's entire family — Meghan Markle and their children — was expected to join him, but the plans fell apart after the family was excluded from the Metropolitan Police's official royal protection detail. Harry's team ultimately announced that Meghan and the children would not travel to London and might instead join him later in Birmingham.

Harry stepped back from royal duties in 2020 and relocated to California, and has since used a memoir and interviews to air grievances about rifts with members of the royal family, including his brother Prince William. The BBC said the disputes over accommodation and security had made an already complicated prospect — a reunion between King Charles III and his younger son — even harder to achieve.