Meghan, Duchess of Sussex back on Instagram to share beach video filmed by Harry

Despite vowing not to return to social media due to the “almost unsurvivable” abuse she faced, the Duchess of Sussex returned to Instagram yesterday with a playful video on a beach.

The 43-year-old shared her first clip – filmed by Prince Harry near their California home – and simply captioned it ‘@meghan’. It had been rumoured that the profile – originally set up in 2022 but lying dormant – belonged to her after she teased fans in 2023 by declaring she was ‘getting back on Instagram’.

Now the mother-of-two has confirmed the account is hers by posting footage taken on the shore not far from the home she shares in Montecito with Harry and their children Archie, five, and Lilibet, three.

Within minutes, tens of thousands of people had begun following the account. To the sound of the surf, the 30-second clip shows Meghan in white pedal-pushers and a white shirt jogging barefoot to the water’s edge and writing “2025” in the sand with her finger, before running off giggling.

The @meghan account also updated its profile picture to a black-and-white shot of her laughing in a white dress.

The duchess shut down her social media accounts in January 2018, just after getting engaged to Prince Harry, and in 2020 the couple stopped posting to their Sussex Royal Instagram and Twitter accounts.

However, she then secured the new account in June 2022 before launching her Archetypes podcast in August 2022.

It had a profile image of pink dahlias, but no biographical information. At the time, a source said: “Meghan was set to go live on Insta, but changed her mind... so it’s just sitting there now.”

Experts have predicted she could earn £790,000 per post as “an absolute minimum”.

Social media expert Eric Schiffer told The Mail On Sunday that there was “no reason Meghan couldn’t be earning those sorts of fees”. The duchess did not respond to a request to comment.