Pakistan just threw its first dedicated awards night for digital creators, and the people who put it on want the country to treat the work as a real industry. According to Arab News‘s Buraq Shabbir, the Pakistan Influencer Awards 2026 were held this week at Karachi’s Expo Center, with honors for creators on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram across more than 30 categories.

According to Pakistan Times‘s Babar Khan, English Biscuit Manufacturers, better known as EBM, was the title partner, and ARY Digital Network was the presenting media and streaming partner. The same report said a Sooper Creator Lounge opened at the Expo Centre on November 6 for a two-day run of masterclasses, industry talks, and networking, giving creators a chance to meet brands and talk through how to earn from their work.

A first for Pakistan’s creator scene

Shabbir reported that the show was organized by the Pakistan Influencer Awards team with independent technology, research, audit, and jury partners. It was curated by Talha Aslam, a brand-marketing and digital-ecosystem strategist with more than a decade in the field, and directed by Zeeshan Mianoor, chief executive of Pakistani phone maker Inovi Telecom. Each of the 30-plus categories had five nominees, covering fashion, lifestyle, technology, automobiles, fitness, food, and more.

Speaking with Arab News on the sidelines on Saturday, Aslam said the point was to treat the work as more than a hobby. “The major idea behind the influencer awards was to recognize that it’s a serious industry and there is a huge potential,” he said. He added that content creators are “a big economy,” pointing to 135,000 monetized YouTube accounts in Pakistan and to brands that, in his words, are “launching with influencer faces with immense budgets for influencer marketing.”

Aslam also sketched the audience those creators are speaking to: 110 million internet users in Pakistan, 63 percent of them under 30, who he said spend eight hours a day on their phones.

How the winners were picked

The organizers did not leave the trophies to a popularity contest alone. Aslam told Arab News that data first identified the top 20 names in each category, a Creative Jury cut that list to 10, and an Executive Jury made up of people from brands and advertising agencies then scored the remaining nominees out of five. Public voting came last. “We received four million votes in just 15 days, which is actually a big number,” he said. He also said the process looked for creators who stay consistent and have real people following them, not just a genre label.

Pakistan Times named two of the winners: Barira Khan for Best Travel Creator, and the pair known as Ducky Bhai and Aroob for Best Couple Creator. Arab News named Maryam Raja as the winner in the Voices and Perspectives category and Zarnab Fatima as the winner in the lifestyle influencer category on Instagram.

What creators say the trophies should measure

Several people at the event told Shabbir that follower counts are no longer the whole story. Adnan Zafar, a lifestyle, skincare, and fashion influencer who goes by “Ken Doll,” argued that judges should look at what a creator adds to the wider economy — how they help brands grow, and how many sales come from a single Reel or Story.

Hasan Rizvi, who sat on the Executive Jury, said popularity and impact both matter. “If an influencer has 40 million followers, it’s not an easy feat or else everyone had those followers,” he told Arab News, adding that a creator who has held the attention of an audience that large deserves credit for it. He also noted that some people with smaller followings have made “a very, very big impact.”

Raja called the show an overdue kind of recognition. “We have always seen awards for actors and films but for the very first time we’ve heard of Pakistan Influencers Awards,” she said. She told Shabbir she started making content to encourage other women to chase their dreams, and that in a conservative country like Pakistan, content creation is still looked down on, especially for women.

Fatima, the Instagram lifestyle winner, said her own family has accepted her work, but that society still treats a woman who stays home as the “good girl” and looks sideways at one who stands up for herself. She said awards like this help change that, and she put a responsibility on the people collecting them: if creators are posting or promoting something, it should be appropriate, because all kinds of people watch — and, as she put it, “The youth follows us.”

The takeaway

Creator awards are common in the United States and Europe. In Pakistan, this appears to be the first time the industry has staged one of its own at this scale, complete with data screens, brand juries, and millions of public votes. The organizers are making a business argument as much as a cultural one: more than a hundred thousand monetized YouTube accounts, young audiences glued to their phones, and brand budgets already flowing toward faces on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. Whether a new trophy case is enough to shift how families and advertisers see that work is a longer test. For now, the country has at least put the work on a stage and called it an industry.

Image: Clifton, Karachi skyline, photo by Ahmad Haq, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).