Ali Zafar

Ali Zafar is a singer, songwriter, composer, actor and painter from Lahore. Trained at the National College of Arts, he drew portraits for a living before anyone had heard him sing. Two decades on, his work runs from the recording studio to the film set to the canvas, and his audience from Pakistan's living rooms to stadiums abroad.

His first album, Huqa Pani (2003), sold more than five million copies, one of the biggest selling records in Pakistan's history, and gave the country one of its defining pop songs in Channo. The press called him the Prince of Pop. Masty and Jhoom followed, and with them the anthems. He was among the pioneers of Coke Studio, where his fusion of Allah Hu was one of the early tracks that set the movement in motion and Rockstar became one of its most watched performances. He was the creative force and sole brand ambassador of the Pakistan Super League for its first three years, and Ab Khel Jamay Ga became a song the whole country sang. His revival of folk and regional classics has gathered more than two hundred million views. Few artists have given a country so many of the songs it sings together.

In 2010 he became the first Pakistani actor of his generation to lead in mainstream Bollywood. Tere Bin Laden brought him a Filmfare nomination and the Stardust award for most promising newcomer, and six films followed, among them Dear Zindagi and London Paris New York, for which he also composed the soundtrack and sang Voh Dekhne Mein. In 2018 he came home to write, produce and star in Teefa in Trouble, which opened to the biggest numbers in Pakistani cinema history.

He has been the face of the world's largest brands in Pakistan, Pepsi, Coca-Cola and Lux, the first man to front a Lux campaign alongside the country's leading actresses, and the voice of its largest stages: the opening of the ILT20's fourth season at Dubai International Stadium, and, in 2024, a crowd of more than 100,000 at Riyadh Season, his first performance in Saudi Arabia. His 34 awards include six Lux Style Awards and the Pride of Performance, one of Pakistan's highest civilian honours.

In December 2025 he released Roshni. The album carried the largest touring year of his career: eight North American cities, more than 75,000 people, and 45,000 of them on a single evening at Mississauga's Celebration Square, believed to be the largest audience ever gathered for a Pakistani artist on that continent.

In 2015 he founded the Ali Zafar Foundation to give underprivileged children, and girls above all, a free education worth having: better schools, better teachers, and the health, nutrition and sport that let a child stay in the classroom. The Foundation also stands with families in crisis, in floods and in hardship, when standing with them is what is needed.

What he wants from here is simple to say and hard to do: to use whatever standing he has to change how Pakistan educates its children, and to bring mindfulness and music into the curriculum, so that the next generation is raised not only to know more but to be more. A small part, he would say, in raising the level of human consciousness. He still paints.

"You cannot be a star if you cannot shine for others."Ali Zafar