More than 1,200 YouTube channels from Pakistan have crossed one million subscribers, while over 60 percent of watch time on content produced by Pakistani channels now comes from viewers outside the country, according to figures shared by Google. Pakistan based channels uploaded more than 20 million hours of content over the past year, with more than 140,000 channels crossing 10,000 subscribers and over 19,000 surpassing 100,000 subscribers.
The international audience for Pakistani content spans South Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and North America, reflecting how far local creators are now reaching beyond the domestic market. Farhan Qureshi, Google’s Cluster Director for Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, and Frontier Markets, said Pakistani creators are using YouTube to take local culture, creativity, and ideas to international audiences while building businesses, creating employment, and contributing to entrepreneurship.
Several creators illustrate the range of formats driving this growth. Shahveer Jaffry, with close to four million subscribers, produces long form reality content built around a regular group of friends, typically in episodes of 30 minutes or shorter. Travel creator Abrar Hassan, who runs WildLens by Abrar with more than 2.2 million subscribers, previously worked as an aerospace engineer in Germany before riding his motorcycle from Germany to Pakistan during the COVID period and later becoming a full time creator, having since traveled to more than 90 countries and currently documenting a journey from Pakistan to the Americas in Urdu and Punjabi.
Food Fusion, launched in 2016, has grown to more than five million subscribers and became the first Pakistani food channel to cross one billion views, built around short, edited recipe videos that emphasize the cooking process. Rana Hamza Saif’s channel, RHS, has built more than 1.6 million subscribers since 2016 through formats including city food tours and interactive series like Letting the Person in Front of Me Decide. Educational content has also found an audience, with Minahil Temur’s channel Minoqtopus producing long form video essays on technical, social, and cultural topics, while entertainment commentary channel Something Haute, co-founded by journalists Aamna Haider Isani and Hassan Choudary, has built a following covering Pakistani television, film, and fashion through drama reviews and celebrity interviews, reaching audiences both within Pakistan and among overseas Pakistanis. Google’s figures point to a YouTube ecosystem in Pakistan that continues to diversify in format while extending its reach well beyond the country’s borders.
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