It’s been a decade since Prince Harry cofounded and launched the Invictus Games to help wounded or injured service personnel and veterans through sport.
And in a new interview on The Daily Show with JJ Chalmers, which dropped on Friday, February 14, the Duke of Sussex shared why he believes the event is just as important as ever 11 years after its debut.
“By the looks of it, there’s always going to be a need for these games,” Harry, 40, told host Chalmers. “It was naive to assume — or hope — that the Games wouldn’t be needed for anything longer than maybe those three years to help everybody off the back of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.”
The event has continued to grow since its first iteration in March 2014, which featured around 400 competitors from 13 nations. In 2025, there are up to 550 people from more than 20 countries who have competed in the Invictus Games, which are being held in Vancouver and Whistler from February 8 to 16.
“I think that now that we’ve grown to 23 nations, inevitably, even if you just have five percent of those competing nations in some form of a conflict then you’re going to keep needing to… you’re going to keep needing the Games,” Harry explained.
The Duke added that his biggest concern is maintaining the momentum and continuing helping the servicemen and women once the physical event is over.
“I think one of the hardest things is the worry… what happens after the Games?” Harry added. “And we’ve always talked about the drop off of this amazing atmosphere that we create, this experience, these memories that are made for a lifetime.”
Harry, who served in the British Armed Forces for 10 years, went on to talk about the importance of the sense of community and camaraderie that is established at the Invictus Games continuing in the participants’ day-to-day lives.
“I’m comforted to know that so many of the nations have implemented this post-Games program — these moments of coming back together again, to be able to talk about the Games, talk about where you are now and continue that community and that support and network because a lot of these partners are genuinely concerned,” Harry said.
He continued: “This is an amazing high but does everything go back to what it was before? The answer is I can’t promise that it won’t. You can’t promise that it won’t and nor can the individuals themselves but we hope from these last 10 days that some of the experiences and some of the new support that they’ve perhaps gained and the new stories and experiences that they’ve now been part of, they’ll be able to hold on to that.”
