Abstract The interesting characteristics of long-term solar activity at high latitudes are reported as follows. (1) Two cyclic behaviours, but in anti-phase with each other, simultaneously exist at high latitudes: the magnetic fluxes in units of gauss of the line-of-sight magnetic fields at latitudes of 60°–70°, possibly representing the amplitude of solar magnetic activity at high latitudes, are in complete anti-phase with the solar activity at middle and low latitudes, usually represented by sunspot numbers. However, the numbers of filaments at latitudes of 60°–90°, possibly representing the complexity of solar magnetic activity at high latitudes, are strangely in complete anti-phase with the magnetic fluxes. (2) Two latitude migrations, but in opposite drift directions relative to each other, exist in a cycle: a poleward migration drifts from the middle latitudes toward the solar poles in the first half of a normal cycle, following an equatorward migration found from the solar poles towards the middle latitudes in the other half of the normal cycle. (3) It is inferred that polar faculae, a frequently observed phenomenon at high latitudes, are more related to the amplitude than to the complexity of solar magnetic activity at high latitudes, and they are in phase with the magnetic fluxes. (4) High-latitude flares, a violent active phenomenon at high latitudes, keep in step with neither the amplitude nor the complexity of solar magnetic activity at high latitudes; they seemingly occur just around the maximum times of both.