Arab Reading Challenge Winner: Who Is Mayar El-Shorbagy?

Mayar El-Shorbagy, an 11-year-old Egyptian sixth-grader from a state primary school in Kafr El-Sheikh, won the 10th Arab Reading Challenge in Dubai on 29 October 2026. She finished ahead of 40,286,428 students from 60 countries and took the Dh500,000 champion’s prize, about $136,000, or between six and seven million Egyptian pounds.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the UAE’s vice president and prime minister and the ruler of Dubai, crowned her at the Dubai World Trade Centre. He took the badge from his own chest and gave it to her, and kissed her on the head while she broke down in tears. The competition registers her as Mayar Mohamed Ragab Othman; in Egypt she is known by her family name, El-Shorbagy.

A girl who never studied abroad came out of Egypt’s public schools and beat the whole Arab world at reading. Her win will push Egyptian families to make reading a priority for their children, and the state should study exactly how she did it and build it into every classroom.

• An Egyptian state-school pupil beat more than 40 million students from 60 countries to win the Arab Reading Challenge, the Arab world’s largest reading competition.
• She read more than 60 books in one school year and summarised each in writing; the rules require 50.
• Sheikh Mohammed’s warmth toward her has roots in his own childhood visit to Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Cairo in 1959.
• Dubai held the ceremony while the US was moving air defences into Israel, a message that the region’s children still come first.

In 1959, a year after Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum became ruler of Dubai, he took his son Mohammed, then about ten years old, on a visit to Egypt. He wanted the boy to see the country for himself. In Cairo they met President Gamal Abdel Nasser, then hailed across the region as the leader of the Arab nation, with Anwar Sadat also present. At the end of the visit Nasser gave the young Mohammed a small gift, the kind of present a head of state gives a child. Sheikh Mohammed published a photograph of himself as a boy beside Nasser in May 2017, and footage of that 1959 visit still circulates.

Sixty-seven years later the gesture came back. The boy who stood before Nasser is now the ruler of Dubai, and on 29 October he stood before an 11-year-old Egyptian girl and gave her the badge he was wearing. Sheikh Mohammed crowns the challenge’s winners every year, yet with Mayar he went further than usual. She reminded him of himself: a child from a small place, standing in front of a leader and a wider world.

That is why the scene moved so many people. Sheikh Mohammed grew up loving Egypt. He has ruled Dubai since January 2006 and turned a trading port into a global hub, from Dubai Media City and Dubai Internet City to Festival City and the towers that now define its skyline. He has nothing to prove to anyone. Yet when an Egyptian girl won, he greeted her like one of his own children.

The challenge is hard. To enter, a student must read 50 books within a single school year, roughly eight months, and write a summary of each by hand in the competition’s “passports”. Artificial intelligence cannot do this for them. A summary proves understanding, not memorisation.

Mayar read more than 60. The books were not 1,000-page volumes. Most ran from 35 to 100 pages, in poetry, history and geography, many tied to her school subjects. At around two books a week, that is about an hour of reading a day. She went past the requirement, and she understood what she read well enough to summarise every book.

More than 17 million Egyptian students entered the qualifying rounds run by Egypt’s Ministry of Education. Mayar, a pupil at Martyr Hamdy Sharabi Primary School in Burg El-Burullus, a fishing district on the Mediterranean coast of Kafr El-Sheikh governorate, beat every one of them, and then the national champions of the rest of the Arab world.

The final stage is the toughest. The last six finalists face a surprise question about any book they have read and must answer in Modern Standard Arabic, the formal language of books and broadcasting. The judges test whether the student really read and understood the book, and how confidently they can defend their answer. Mayar came out on top. Palestine’s Ghazal Taim took second place and Dh100,000, and Saudi Arabia’s Rayan Al Zakri third place and Dh70,000.

“Words cannot describe it,” Mayar said on stage. “My family, my country and my governorate are all proud of me. I dedicate this first to my family, and to my supervisor, my school and everyone who helped me reach this summit.” She has said she will use the money to build a library at her school.

The Arab Reading Challenge is an annual Arabic-language reading competition for school students from grade 1 to grade 12, launched by Sheikh Mohammed in 2015 and first run in the 2015–16 school year. Students read 50 books in a school year and summarise them in five reading passports. Winners advance from school to district and national rounds, and the national champions compete in a final held in Dubai each October.

It has grown at remarkable speed. About 3.5 million students took part in the first edition; the 10th drew 40,286,428 students from 138,426 schools in 60 countries, guided by 161,507 supervisors. Students outside the Arab world and pupils with disabilities have their own categories. The organisers say the average participant’s yearly reading has risen from eight books to more than 40, and that over 80 per cent now read every week.

Dubai pays for it. The challenge awards about Dh11 million in prizes every year, and more than Dh110 million over ten editions. At this year’s ceremony Sheikh Mohammed reviewed plans for a Dh500 million endowment, a property development in Dubai whose income will fund the challenge for the long term. It is not the UAE Reading Challenge or the Gulf Reading Challenge. It is open to every Arab child, and no other Arab country runs anything like it.

Mayar El-Shorbagy is not simply a clever girl who won a contest. She is a champion who beat almost every child in Egypt and 40 million students across the Arab world, and earned $136,000 at the age of 11. Her family has every reason to be proud. Egypt now has a model in its own schools, and the task is to study it and copy it, so that thousands more children like her read their way to a better future.