Meghan Markle Kicks Off 2025 by Rejoining Instagram in a Video Shot by Prince Harry!

Meghan Markle is back on Instagram!

On Jan. 1, Meghan, 43, kicked off the new year with a new account on the social media platform. It had long been rumored that the handle @meghan belonged to the Duchess of Sussex, and her first post under that account featured her in a video, wearing all white and running on the beach, writing "2025" in the sand before running back off camera. PEOPLE understands the unfiltered video was shot by her husband Prince Harry at a public beach near their Montecito, California home.

In addition to her first post, the @meghan account also updated its profile picture to a black-and-white shot of Meghan smiling and wearing white, though a different white look than in her first post.

PEOPLE understands Meghan is excited to return to social media as a way to reconnect with communities around the world and share updates about the projects she's working on, looking to lead by example in demonstrating the potential for social media to bring joy and positive connection.

The update comes over two years after Meghan hinted that she was getting back on Instagram in conversation with The Cut.

"Do you want to know a secret?" she said in a wide-ranging interview published in August 2022. "I'm getting back… on Instagram."

Although Meghan "would relay she was no longer sure she would actually return to Instagram" later in the interview, she’s maintained a presence on the platform in the past. Before she married Prince Harry in 2018, the Suits star had 3 million followers on an Instagram account under her own name as well as lifestyle blog The Tig. She shut down her beloved blog in April 2017, a few months before she and Harry got engaged, and deleted her social media pages the following January.

Related: Meghan Markle Teases a Return to Instagram After Giving Up Social Media 'Was a Big Adjustment'

"It was a big adjustment — a huge adjustment to go from that kind of autonomy to a different life," she told The Cut of the transitionary time.

Meghan and Harry tied the knot in May 2018, and news about their royal work appeared on the @KensingtonRoyal accounts alongside updates about Prince William and Kate Middleton — but it came with strict rules.

"There's literally a structure by which if you want to release photos of your child, as a member of the family, you first have to give them to the Royal Rota," the Duchess of Sussex told The Cut in 2022, referring to the U.K.'s media pool. She questioned why she should release photos of her child to the media before she can "share it with the people that love my child?" Parents of two, Meghan and Harry share 5-year-old son Prince Archie and 3-year-old daughter Princess Lilibet.

A month before Archie was born in May 2019 — and among the first steps in establishing a separate office from William and Kate — Meghan and Harry broke the mold by launching a separate Instagram page, @SussexRoyal, which The Cut notes drew over one million followers in six hours. The page highlighted their royal work with a personal feel, as they signed their Instagram posts or attributed quotes to themselves using their Duke and Duchess of Sussex titles.

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The @SussexRoyal Instagram account stopped being updated after Harry and Meghan stepped back from their senior royal roles in 2020, and its final post was shared in March 2020.

“As we can all feel, the world at this moment seems extraordinarily fragile. Yet we are confident that every human being has the potential and opportunity to make a difference — as seen now across the globe, in our families, our communities and those on the front line — together we can lift each other up to realize the fullness of that promise,” Harry and Meghan began the caption of a graphic with a thank you message under their royal cypher.

The page remains online, though comments have since been disabled. That April, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex launched what became The Archewell Foundation, the nonprofit arm of their larger Archewell organization, which would grow to include Archewell Audio and Archewell Productions, their production hubs.

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