Two Pakistani culinary students from COTHM Multan have won bronze medals at international cooking competitions in Indonesia, according to reporting by Hospitality Plus, Pakistan’s hospitality industry magazine.
Hafiza Shafia Umer won her bronze at the 8th La Cuisine Culinary Competition 2026, where she competed in Class 21, the Asian Probiotic Chicken category. Shafia is a student at COTHM Multan and a student member of the Chefs Association of Pakistan, and her medal was celebrated publicly by both the college and the association.
Plant-based cooking was one of the winning categories for the Pakistani students, with Mahnoor Ahmed taking bronze in the Global Vegan Chefs Challenge.
Photo: FitTasteTic, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Bronze in the Global Vegan Chefs Challenge
Mahnoor Ahmed, also a COTHM Multan student and a student member of the Chefs Association of Pakistan, won bronze at the Worldchefs Global Championships, Asia Semifinal 2026 in Indonesia. Her medal came in category G3, the Global Vegan Chefs Challenge, a class that asks chefs to build a complete competition dish without any animal products.
The two events sit inside the Worldchefs calendar. Worldchefs, the World Association of Chefs Societies, is the global body for chefs’ associations, and its endorsed competitions are where young chefs are judged by international panels against set category rules. For students still in training, a medal at this level is an early international result on their record.
Both medalists come from the same campus. COTHM, the College of Tourism and Hotel Management, trains students for Pakistan’s hotel and restaurant industry, and its Multan campus supplied both of the students who reached the podium in Indonesia. The Chefs Association of Pakistan, the professional body for chefs in the country, counts both students among its student members, which links their college training to the national professional community they will join after graduating. Two bronzes from one campus, in two different competition classes in the same week, point to coaching and preparation behind the results rather than a single lucky dish: one medal came in a chicken category built around Asian flavours, the other in a fully plant-based class, which are very different tests of a young chef.
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Why the wins matter for Pakistani culinary students
Pakistan’s food talent usually makes headlines through exports and trade shows, such as the 37 Pakistani companies that showcased food products at SIAL Paris 2026. Medals for individual students tell a different story: they show the training pipeline underneath the industry is starting to produce chefs who can compete abroad while still at college.
The bronzes also continue a strong season for Pakistani students generally, from the UMT students who won Rs1 million for a low-cost DNA testing idea to the Innovation Quest plan to give free robotics training to 10,000 students. For Pakistani culinary students, results in Indonesia suggest that hospitality training in cities like Multan can carry students onto international competition floors.
Hospitality Plus reported both results on 7 November 2026, and noted that the Chefs Association of Pakistan and COTHM Multan congratulated both students on their medals. For Shafia and Mahnoor, the next step on the Worldchefs ladder would be the global finals, where semifinal medalists from each region meet.
Competition experience of this kind changes what a student brings back to the classroom. Cooking to an international judging panel means working to a fixed time, presenting to a set standard and being scored against chefs trained in other countries, which is a different discipline from daily kitchen service. Students who have been through it tend to raise the level of the classmates around them, and colleges that send students abroad regularly build that standard into their own teaching.
Sources
- Hospitality Plus: Hafiza Shafia Umer Brings International Bronze Glory to Pakistan at 8th La Cuisine Culinary Competition 2026
- Hospitality Plus: Mahnoor Ahmed Wins Bronze Medal at Worldchefs Global Championships 2026 in Indonesia
- Featured photo: Jussi Ulkunniemi, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
- Body photo: FitTasteTic, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Umar Farooq is the founder and editor of Good News Pakistan. An engineer by profession and a writer by passion, he started the site in December 2022 to share good news from Pakistan, and has since written and edited more than 200 articles about its people, sports, science, business and world records. He believes the story of Pakistan is bigger than its headlines, and that good news, told honestly, is worth telling every day.