This paper describes recent variations that have emerged in spatial patterns of retroflections in the monthly Gulf Stream (GS) path. They have become less frequent and also shifted further to the east; we find this in both reanalysis and free‐running model data of the ocean. A suite of eddy‐rich North Atlantic ocean ensemble simulations, forced with varying combinations of realistic and climatological boundary conditions, is used to diagnose the relative importance of atmospheric and oceanic drivers of these changes. It is implied that the majority of the shifts and changes in the number of retroflections throughout the five decades (1963‐2012) are products of realistic atmospheric forcing and oceanic boundary conditions but only the latter is found to be statistically significant