Arab Reading Challenge 2026: Mohammed bin Rashid crowns Egypt's Mayar Mohamed Ragab Othman champion of the 10th edition
His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, crowned Egyptian student Mayar Mohamed Ragab Othman champion of the 10th Arab Reading Challenge at the closing ceremony held at Dubai World Trade Centre on Thursday 29 October 2026. The new champion comes from Kafr El Sheikh governorate. She read 60 books during her journey in the challenge and takes home the top prize of Dh500,000.
Mayar's road to the stage was a long one. She reached the finals after coming top of a field of 17,616,289 participants from Egypt alone, before competing against the champions of other countries in Dubai. Speaking after the ceremony, she said that "number one is not just a position we compete for, it is a human mind that knows no impossible", and said she intends to put part of the prize towards building a library at her school. Ghazal Taim of Palestine, 16, took second place and Dh100,000, while Rayan Al Zakri of Saudi Arabia, 11, came third with Dh70,000.
The 10th edition set records unmatched since the initiative was launched in 2015. A total of 40,286,428 students from 60 countries took part, an increase of about 24 per cent on the ninth edition, including 74,062 participants from among people of determination. Some 138,426 schools joined the challenge, with 161,507 supervisors following the students and documenting their reading throughout the school year.
Other categories were also crowned on the night. Sidi Amer Primary School in Tunisia won the Outstanding School title and its Dh1 million prize, presented with the participation of His Highness Sheikh Saif bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior. The people of determination title went to Mahmoud Omran of Syria, the communities title to Sohaib Majd of New Zealand, and Fakhri Mayas of Jordan was named Outstanding Supervisor. The challenge is organised under Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Global Initiatives and is the largest Arab project to encourage reading among school students.
Al Majlis Analysis: The figures from the 10th edition show that the Arab Reading Challenge has outgrown the idea of an annual competition and become a cross-border education network, running through more than 138,000 schools and hundreds of thousands of supervisors. It is telling that the champion comes from a rural governorate in Egypt and that the Outstanding School title went to a primary school in Tunisia, which suggests the initiative genuinely reaches beyond the big cities. Mayar's plan to turn her prize into a school library is the clearest expression of the project's real aim: for reading to grow from a personal achievement into something that benefits classmates too. The challenge for the coming years will be to measure what these millions of books do for comprehension, writing and critical thinking, not just how many are read.
Correction (30 October 2026): An earlier version of this article gave the champion's name incorrectly. Her correct name is Mayar Mohamed Ragab Othman, as officially announced. The reference to her age has also been removed.