Tibetans in India and Nepal came together to celebrate the 91st birthday of the 14th Dalai Lama with prayer ceremonies, cultural performances, and cake cutting, while the Tibetan spiritual leader continues to live in exile in India.
On 6 July 2026, reports stated that Tibetans in India and Nepal held ceremonies to mark the 91st birthday of the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists, amid an atmosphere filled with prayers, cultural performances, and religious rites.
The Dalai Lama attended the grand celebration held in Leh, a highland city in the union territory of Ladakh, northern India, where many monks and Tibetans gathered to offer blessings. Meanwhile, in Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh, the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile and the Dalai Lama's residence, Tibetan refugees in India organized cultural performances to honor the important day. In Kathmandu, Nepal, Tibetan exiles cut cake, prayed, and performed traditional dances to pay tribute to the Dalai Lama.
The 14th Dalai Lama was appointed as the supreme leader of Tibetans in 1937, before the Chinese army took control of Tibet in the 1950s and suppressed Tibetan uprisings in 1959. This led the Dalai Lama to flee Tibet with thousands of followers and establish the Tibetan government-in-exile in India. Although the Dalai Lama describes himself as an "ordinary Buddhist monk," millions of Tibetan Buddhists worldwide revere him as an incarnation of the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, the embodiment of compassion, and as the spiritual heart of the Tibetan people to this day.