Kate Middleton vs Meghan Markle: Who Is More Popular in Britain in 2026?

Catherine, Princess of Wales, is far more popular in Britain in 2026 than Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, on the two pollsters that publish regular royal ratings. No comparable worldwide survey this year has ranked them against each other.

YouGov's July tracker found the Prince and Princess of Wales the most positively viewed royals, with 74 to 76 percent of Britons holding a favorable opinion, a level the firm said had been largely unchanged for several years. In the same wave, 22 percent saw Meghan positively and 65 percent unfavorably. Prince Harry was at 33 percent favorable and 58 percent unfavorable, a modest improvement over the year. King Charles was at 62 percent positive and 31 percent negative, and 68 percent said he was doing a good job, the highest in that tracker.

Ipsos, polling Aug. 28–31, found 65 percent of British adults favorable toward both Catherine and William, again the highest in the family. About 38 percent said a reconciliation between Harry and Meghan and the rest of the family would be a good thing, 17 percent said it would be bad, and 33 percent said it would make no difference. Support for a reconciliation was higher among 18-to-34-year-olds.

A separate YouGov ratings series for the second quarter put Meghan lower still: liked by 18 percent, disliked by 61 percent, a net of minus 43, down from minus 21 in the first quarter, when the figures were 26 and 47. Newsweek reported that as her lowest net in that series. A traditional YouGov poll on July 21–22 had her at 22 percent liked and 65 percent disliked, net minus 43, a slight improvement on a mid-April net of minus 47. Among millennials in the quarterly data she was liked by 33 percent and disliked by 40 percent, the least negative age band and still negative.

Those are British numbers. They do not answer the worldwide half of the question. YouGov and Ipsos were not fielding a global head-to-head. Search interest, Netflix audiences and U.S. favorability are different measures, and none of them has been published this year as a single ranking of the two women. Treating an American celebrity poll, or an Instagram following, as a world vote would be a different claim from the one the British surveys make.

The gap in Britain lines up with role, not with a single news cycle. Catherine is the wife of the heir, appears on the working roster, and has spent the year after her cancer treatment back in public duties. Meghan stepped back with Harry in 2020, lives between a California base and a reported return to Britain this summer, and this week posted a home video of their daughter for the As Ever brand. Us Weekly said in August the couple planned to be in England before the school year. A brand clip is not a favorability poll. The July and August surveys already had Catherine near two-thirds to three-quarters and Meghan near one-fifth.

In Britain, on the published 2026 data, Catherine is the more popular of the two by a wide margin. Worldwide, the honest answer is that a survey that could say so has not been released.