It’s not just your friends from college. Even Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle has leapt into the “2026 is the new 2016” trend that’s sweeping social media. But while most of us are dredging up grainy, 10-year-old shots and videos intended to establish that 2016 was a great year worthy of nostalgia, Meghan Markle might have more reason than most to look back, as 2016 was the year she met her now-husband, Prince Harry.
These throwback posts have become almost a viral obligation, one that not even royalty can escape. In the Duchess of Sussex’s case the post was a short black-and-white video of the couple dancing barefoot on the grass—but the video, itself, wasn’t from ten years ago, as Markle notes it was shot by the Meghan and Harry’s daughter, Princess Lilibet Diana, who was born in 2021.
Swipe, and you’ll see a photo of the pair in Botswana, which the couple visited together just weeks after they began dating in July of 2016. “When 2026 looks just like 2016,” the post’s caption reads.
For Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, 2016 was indeed a watershed year. They met through a mutual friend and began dating in secret, six months before their bond became public. The couple married on May 19, 2018, in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle. The following year they became parents of their firstborn son, Prince Archie Harrison, born on May 6, 2019.
