Prince William's Earthshot Prize summit in New York City next month faces being overshadowed as Prince Harry has announced a multi-day working visit to the city at the same time.
On Tuesday, a spokesperson for Harry revealed that the prince will be undertaking a round of specially organized appearances in NYC during the United Nations General Assembly High-level Week and Climate Week, which runs from September 22 to 29.
"During UN General Assembly High-level Week and Climate Week in New York City, Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex, will be in town to advance a number of his patronages and philanthropic initiatives," the spokesperson confirmed to Newsweek.
"He will participate in engagements with African Parks, The HALO Trust, The Diana Award, and Travalyst. In addition, he will be furthering the work of The Archewell Foundation, the nonprofit organization he co-founded with his wife Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex. More details will be shared as we approach the week of events."
The news of Harry's trip comes just a month after Prince William's Earthshot Prize announced that it will be hosting its third annual Innovation Summit in partnership with Bloomberg Philanthropies in New York on September 24.
The summit is used as an opportunity for Earthshot to announce the short list of finalists nominated for one of the five grants of over a million dollars that are given to eco-initiatives to scale up their businesses in the interest of preserving the planet and repairing the environment. The five winners are announced at a large-scale awards ceremony held in a different city around the world each year.
In November 2024, the fourth Earthshot Prize awards ceremony is set to be held in Cape Town, South Africa.
Kensington Palace has not publicly commented on whether William will attend the New York Summit in September. He did not attend the first summit in 2022, coming just days after Queen Elizabeth II died.
He did attend in 2023, though his presence has not been announced as a recurring feature of the summit, and details published ahead of the event do not include an appearance from the prince. They do, however, state that the event will be addressed this year by the Global Advisor to the Winners of The Earthshot Prize, Michael R. Bloomberg.
Newsweek approached Kensington Palace via email for comment.
Prince Harry's confirmed presence in the city is likely to draw speculation about his relationship with William. Since his split from the monarchy in 2020, the prince has made a number of public criticisms of his brother in interviews and media projects.
In January 2023, Harry's relationship with William was a primary focus of his memoir, Spare, which became the fastest selling non-fiction book of all time and contained a number of barbed comments directed at his elder brother.
Harry revealed to readers that he and William had never been as close as the Palace and press had led the public to believe and, in addition to a number of other complaints, alleged that the prince physically assaulted him in a 2019 argument at Kensington Palace over Meghan Markle's treatment of palace staff.
One of the themes in the brothers' relationship that Harry analyzed in his book was the idea that William was consistently jealous of him and would repeatedly pull rank as the "heir" and future king.
If true, Harry's visit to New York at the same time as the Earthshot summit may irritate his brother, whose Earthshot eco-awards initiative is one of his most significant philanthropic outputs.
The last time Harry and William were together in the same room publicly was in May 2023, where both attended their father's coronation at Westminster Abbey, however, they were not seen to engage in conversation.
Five months earlier, at the time of his memoir's publication, Harry revealed in an interview with Anderson Cooper that he and William were not currently speaking and had not been for "a while."
James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek's royal reporter, based in London. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter) at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.
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