Eight young Pakistanis have won the Diana Award 2026, joining 198 young people from 44 countries honoured at a virtual ceremony on Wednesday 4 November for social action and humanitarian work. The eight, whose work spans medical camps, girls’ education, free legal aid, flood technology, science outreach, polio awareness and women’s crafts, each received congratulatory letters from Prince William and Prince Harry, the award’s supporters since its creation in memory of their mother, Diana, Princess of Wales.
Pakistan’s Diana Award 2026 winners and their work
The eight recipients from Pakistan, with the projects listed in the official Diana Award 2026 Roll of Honour, are:
- Ali Ahmed Manj, 22, Humanity Initiative. For five years he has helped lead student-run medical camps across Karachi and rural Sindh, building a network of more than 1,000 student volunteers across three university chapters that has served over 10,000 patients, alongside flood and disaster relief campaigns.
- Areeba Suleman, 17, SheRise Pakistan. Founder of Dera Ghazi Khan’s first student-led youth organisation, she has built a network of young women advancing girls’ education across South Punjab, directly reaching more than 6,000 students.
- Mariam Rehman, 19, The Pro-Justice Project. While studying law and finance at the University of Sydney, she founded a pro bono legal initiative backed by more than 250 volunteer lawyers, which has supported over 1,000 cases across Pakistan, focusing on women facing harassment, discrimination and legal barriers. She has also given free debate coaching to more than 200 girls.
- Muhammad Ibrahim, 16, Murree Rainwater Harvesting Project. Working with the Government of Punjab, his GIS-based flood damage assessments supported fairer compensation planning for nearly 300,000 families, and his project has installed free rooftop rainwater systems for around 4,000 Murree families.
- Noor Abdul Ghani, 21, WinSci Pakistan. A machine learning engineer and master’s student in artificial intelligence, she founded WinSci to bring more girls and women into science and technology through school sessions and scholarship guidance. WinSci has received the Science Outreach Award from Springer Nature and Estée Lauder Companies.
- Reya Yassir Khawaja, 17, SAFE Project. A student at Nord Anglia International School Dubai, she founded SAFE, short for Sanitation and Female Empowerment, with the KCS Foundation, distributing menstrual hygiene packs and running sessions that encourage open conversation about periods and women’s health.
- Sara Ali, 24, Pakistan Polio Project. Her initiative strengthens vaccine confidence and fights misinformation, mobilising more than 100 volunteers to educate families and support frontline health workers and zero-dose children on the road to a polio-free Pakistan.
- Vishal Parkash, 22, RUBAN and Emprende. Through RUBAN he connects more than 200 women artisans across Karachi, Lahore and Sindh with formal markets, generating over PKR 5 million in revenue, while Emprende gives financial and legal literacy training to refugees and migrants worldwide.
An award built on Diana’s belief in young people
The Diana Award is the only charity bearing the name of Diana, Princess of Wales, and is described as the most coveted accolade a young person aged 16 to 25 can receive for social action or humanitarian work. Nobody applies for it: young people are nominated by adults who have witnessed their work, in a retrospective process the charity calls special because recipients never acted in expectation of reward. For 2026, nominations were assessed by 33 independent judging panels against five criteria: leadership, tangible impact, peer empowerment, resilience and integrity, and sustainability and legacy. Recipients receive a personalised certificate and access to a network of young activists.
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The statue of Diana, Princess of Wales, in the Sunken Garden at Kensington Palace, unveiled by her sons in 2021. The award was established in her memory.
Photo: Gabrielsupekar, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Dr Tessy Ojo CBE, the charity’s chief executive, said this year’s recipients showed that the desire to make a difference is universal: their courage, compassion and determination to tackle pressing challenges, she said, are a powerful reminder that young people are the changemakers of today.
The 2026 ceremony in numbers
The 198 recipients came from 44 countries, with nine countries, including Ukraine and Mongolia, represented for the first time. India had the largest group with 49 recipients, followed by Nigeria with 25, the United States with 23 and Bangladesh with 12, while Pakistan’s eight matched its tally from 2025. By theme, the work mapped onto the UN Sustainable Development Goals: quality education 65, good health and wellbeing 51, reduced inequalities 51 and climate action 31. The full Diana Award 2026 Roll of Honour, with a biography of every recipient, is published on the charity’s website.
A steady Pakistani presence
Pakistan has become a regular name on the Roll of Honour. TechJuice, which profiled this year’s eight, notes that eight Pakistanis were also honoured in 2025 and six in 2023, and that in 2024 Alizey Khan became the first Pakistani woman to receive the higher Diana Legacy Award, presented by Prince William in London for her humanitarian work against food insecurity. The Diana Award 2026 group joins a season of global recognition for young Pakistanis, from Affan Salman, who won the World Youth Scrabble Championship at 16, to the students who took gold at the International Nuclear Science Olympiad and record-setting students such as Mahnoor Cheema. For the eight newest names, the honour recognises work already changing lives in Karachi, Dera Ghazi Khan, Murree and beyond, and opens the door to a worldwide network of young people doing the same.
Sources
- The Diana Award: Young global changemakers honoured with the Diana Award at a virtual ceremony
- The Diana Award: Roll of Honour 2026 (official recipient biographies)
- TechJuice: Eight Pakistanis Win 2026 Diana Award for Social Impact
- Featured image: Kensington Palace in London, the former home of Diana, Princess of Wales, in whose memory the award was established (Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
- In-body image: The statue of Diana, Princess of Wales, in the Sunken Garden at Kensington Palace (Gabrielsupekar, CC BY-SA 4.0, 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.