Iqbal Day, 9 November: Allama Iqbal’s Birthday

Iqbal Day, or Youm-e-Iqbal, is on 9 November, the birthday of Allama Muhammad Iqbal. The next one is on Monday, November 9, 2026, 34 days from today, which will be 149 years since his birth in 1877. Iqbal Day was restored as a public holiday in 2022, after some years off the federal list, and it has been a holiday since; check the Cabinet Division notification each year to confirm.

Who was Allama Iqbal?

Muhammad Iqbal was born on 9 November 1877 in Sialkot, in Punjab. He studied in Sialkot and at Government College Lahore, then went to Europe: he studied at Cambridge, earned a doctorate in philosophy in Germany, and qualified as a barrister in London.

He is remembered as a poet-philosopher who wrote in both Urdu and Persian. His work urged self-respect, self-development and the revival of Muslim thought. He is often called Shair-e-Mashriq, the Poet of the East, and in Pakistan he is honoured as the national poet. The title “Allama” means a great scholar.

Among his best-known books are Bang-e-Dra and Bal-e-Jibril in Urdu, and Asrar-e-Khudi and Javid Nama in Persian. His lectures, published as The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, set out his ideas in English prose. Many of his Urdu poems are taught in schools, and children across Pakistan learn his poem “Lab pe aati hai dua” in the morning assembly.

Iqbal died in Lahore on 21 April 1938, nine years before Pakistan came into being. He is buried beside the Badshahi Mosque in Lahore.

The Allahabad address of 1930

In December 1930 Iqbal presided over the annual session of the All-India Muslim League at Allahabad. In his presidential address he proposed that the Muslim-majority areas of north-west India, Punjab, the North-West Frontier Province, Sindh and Balochistan, should be brought together as a single state, inside or outside the British Empire.

The address is widely seen as one of the earliest clear statements of the idea that became Pakistan. Ten years later the Lahore Resolution of 1940 took the idea further. Iqbal also corresponded with Muhammad Ali Jinnah in the last years of his life and encouraged him to lead the Muslims of India.

How Iqbal Day is observed

• Change of guards: a ceremony is held at Iqbal’s tomb in Lahore, and leaders lay wreaths.
• Readings and seminars: universities, literary societies and schools hold recitals of his poetry and talks about his ideas.
• Media: television runs documentaries and musical renditions of his poems.
• Sialkot: his family home in Sialkot, Iqbal Manzil, draws visitors around his birthday.

Iqbal’s ideas in brief

A central idea in Iqbal’s work is khudi, usually translated as selfhood or self-respect: the belief that a person grows by developing their own abilities and character rather than waiting for fate. He also wrote about the unity of the Muslim world, the dignity of work, and the need for fresh thinking rather than blind imitation of the past. Young people in Pakistan are often compared to his image of the shaheen, the falcon that flies high and depends on no one.

Holiday status

Iqbal Day has moved on and off the list of public holidays over the years. It was removed from the federal list for a period and was restored as a public holiday in 2022. Since the list is notified each year by the Cabinet Division, it’s worth checking that year’s notification before planning around it.

Iqbal Day in coming years

The year 2027 will be Iqbal’s 150th birth anniversary, so expect larger celebrations then. To see how many days are left at any time, use the Iqbal Day countdown, or check any other date with the weekday finder. For the full year’s days off, see Pakistan public holidays in 2027.

Frequently asked questions