Prince Harry has made rare comments about his struggles during his schooldays at Eton College.
The Duke of Sussex, 41, this week made Time100‘s list for the “most influential people in sports” in 2026 for his agenda-setting work with the Invictus Games.
He spoke about how sport has made an impact on his own life, particularly how playing rugby, football, cricket, and polo prevented him from dropping out of school, the prestigious Eton College in Windsor.
He said: “Sport held me together. I was one of those kids at school who did not enjoy classroom work.
“If it wasn’t for the sports field, and the amount of sports that were on offer, there’s no way I would have stayed in school.”
Harry launched the Invictus Games in 2014, a sports tournament that hosts military personnel and veterans. It aims to inspire recovery, support rehabilitation, and generate wider respect for wounded, injured, and sick servicemen and women.
The royal, who served for more than a decade in the British army, said: “When you are wearing your nation’s flag on your arm, on your chest, once that’s removed, there’s something that’s missing.”
A difficult time
Boarding school Eton educates boys between the ages of 13 and 18, with Harry attending from 1998 to 2003.
In his memoir, Spare, Harry previously opened up about how hard he found it to settle into the institution, which now charges £63,298 per year.
“Sport, I decided, would be my thing at Eton,” he wrote, after sharing that he initially found starting at the school “a profound shock”.
“I didn’t even know how to get dressed in the morning,” he wrote.
His older brother, Prince William, however, is known to have had a much more positive experience, gaining 12 GCSEs and three A levels (A in Geography, a B in History of Art and a C in Biology).
Harry wrote in Spare: “Willy told me to pretend I didn’t know him. For the last two years, he explained, Eton had been his sanctuary.
“No kid brother tagging along, pestering him with questions, pushing up on his social circle. He was forging his own life, and he wasn’t willing to give that up.”
The school is now believed to be a frontrunner for Prince George’s secondary school, with co-educational Marlborough College in Wiltshire the other major contender.
Returning to the UK
Harry is set to travel to the UK this July for celebrations a year ahead of the Invictus Games being hosted in Birmingham from 10-17 July 2027. The last games were hosted in Canada at the start of 2025.
Since stepping down as a senior royal with Meghan Markle in 2020, Harry has missed multiple major royal events, such as state banquets and Christmas.
It’s expected that he will miss Saturday’s Trooping The Colour celebrations, which mark King Charles‘s official birthday.
Harry and Meghan last attended Trooping in 2022 for the late Queen Elizabeth.
