Eleven artists were honoured as this year’s winners of the Aga Khan Music Awards which were held in London for the first time

Qalali Folk Band at Aga Khan Music Awards 2025 (Photo: Joao Peixoto)

Eleven artists were honoured at the weekend as this year’s winners of the Aga Khan Music Awards in a ceremony in the Southbank Centre, London. The Awards brought together the world’s music industry in a global celebration of cultural heritage in partnership with EFG London Jazz Festival, marking the first time the Awards have been held in the United Kingdom. 

Winners came from Morocco, Türkiye, Bahrain, Iran, Lebanon, India, Mali, Palestine, Greece, Pakistan and Senegal with a special Patron’s Award celebratomg two remarkable musical lineages of the great poet, composer, musician and Sufi saint Amir Khusrau (1253–1325), who was instrumental in shaping a large part of the music and cultural history of South Asia. 

At the ceremony, audiences enjoyed performances from winners Qalali Folk Band, Kamilya Jubran, Senny Camara, Farah Kaddour, Derya Türkan, Kyriakos Kalaitzidis, and Jordi Savall, David Mayoral, Yurdal Tokcan, and Hamid El Kasri and Gnawa Kouyous, alongside Karim Ziad. 

Farah Kaddour, Senny Camara, Kamilya Jubran at Aga Khan Music Awards 2025 (Photo: Joao Peixoto)

Full List of Winners of the 2025 Aga Khan Music Awards  

• Sahba Aminikia (Iran/USA) – Composer and social innovator Sahba Aminikia is the founder and artistic director of the Flying Carpet Festival.  
• Mariam Bagayoko (Mali) – Singer, dancer, and instrumentalist. Through her mentorship of women and girls, she has played a vital role in sustaining Mali’s musical and dance traditions.   
• Senny Camara (Senegal) – A kora player, singer, and songwriter, she  offers a luminous and distinctly feminine voice within Senegal’s musical landscape. 
• Kamilya Jubran (Palestine/France) – A pioneering voice in contemporary Arabic music, she draws on her Palestinian roots to explore new creative directions and adventurous cross-cultural collaborations. 
• Farah Kaddour (Lebanon) – Composer, performer, and scholar. She has expanded the expressive potential of the buzuq, a long-necked fretted lute with ancient Middle Eastern origins. 
• Kyriakos Kalaitzidis (Greece) – An oud player, composer, and scholar, he illuminates the deep connections between Islamic and Euro-Mediterranean musical traditions, and has championed research and performance of music from the Levant.  
• Hamid El Kasri (Morocco) –  A singer, guembri player and maâlem (master musician) in the Gnawa tradition, he is dedicated to preserving and renewing Morocco’s musical heritage. 
• Qalali Folk Band (Bahrain) – Established over a century ago, the Band is dedicated to performing and preserving Bahrain’s rich seafaring musical heritage. The ensemble is renowned for its renditions of sawt—a popular urban musical genre—and fijri, the traditional music of Bahrain’s pearl divers.
• Ustad Naseeruddin Saami (Pakistan) – A torchbearer of the Delhi gharana (hereditary lineage) of Hindustani music, Ustad Naseeruddin Saami traces his artistic lineage to Amir Khusrau. 
• Derya Türkan (Türkiye) – A classical kemençe player, composer, and educator, he has brought Turkish classical and folk music to audiences worldwide. He is known for blending Turkish traditions with jazz and European classical idioms. 
• Naseer and Nazeer Ahmed Khan Warsi (India) – Leading exponents of qawwali, the devotional Sufi music of South Asia, brothers belong to a family lineage tracing back to the Qawaal Bachhey (children of qawwali)—the singers and musicians trained by Amir Khusrau (1253-1325), the founder of qawwali. 

His Late Highness Prince Karim Aga Khan IV (1936-2025) was the 49th hereditary Imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims and the founder of the Aga Khan Development Network. One manifestation of his hereditary responsibilities was a deep engagement with development spanning more than sixty years. He established the Aga Khan Music Programme in 2000. 

Full details from the Aga Khan Development Network website.