Imran Khan, in full Imran Ahmad Khan Niazi, (born 5 October 1952, Lahore, Pakistan), Pakistani cricketer, politician, philanthropist and Prime Minister of Pakistan (2018–22), who became a national hero for leading the Pakistan national team to winning the Cricket World Cup in 1992 and later entered politics as a critic of government corruption in Pakistan.

Born into a wealthy Pashtun family in Lahore, Khan studied at elite schools in Pakistan and the United Kingdom, including the Royal Grammar School in Worcester and Aitchison College in Lahore. There have been several successful cricketers in his family, including two older cousins, Javed Burki and Majid Khan, who both served as captains of the Pakistan national team. Imran Khan played cricket in Pakistan and the United Kingdom in his teenage years and continued playing while studying philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford University. Khan played his first match for the Pakistan national team in 1971, but did not take up a permanent place in the team until after graduating from Oxford in 1976. In the early 1980s, Khan distinguished himself as an exceptional bowler and all-rounder. in 1982 he was named the captain of the Pakistan team. Khan's athletic talent and good looks made him a celebrity in Pakistan and England, and his regular appearances in fashionable London nightclubs provided fodder for the British tabloid press. In 1992, Khan achieved his greatest athletic success when he led the Pakistan team to its first World Cup title, defeating England in the final. He retired the same year having secured a reputation as one of the greatest cricketers in history.

After 1992, Khan remained in the public eye as a philanthropist. He experienced a religious awakening, embraced Sufi mysticism, and shed his former playboy image. In one of his philanthropic endeavors, Khan served as the chief fundraiser for the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital, a specialized cancer hospital in Lahore that opened in 1994. The hospital was named after Khan's mother, who died of cancer in 1985. 

After his retirement from cricket, Khan became an outspoken critic of mismanagement and corruption in Pakistan. In 1996, he founded his own political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (Pakistan Movement for Justice; PTI). In the national elections held the following year, the newly formed party received less than 1 percent of the vote and won no seats. in the National Assembly, but fared slightly better in the 2002 elections, winning the single seat held by Khan. Khan claimed vote rigging was to blame for his party's low vote tally. In October 2007, Khan was among a group of politicians who resigned from the National Assembly in protest against Pres. Pervez Musharraf's candidacy in the upcoming presidential elections. In November, Khan was briefly jailed during a crackdown on critics of Musharraf who declared a state of emergency. The PTI condemned the state of emergency, which ended in mid-December, and boycotted the 2008 national elections in protest against the Musharraf government. Despite PTI's electoral struggles, Khan's populist stances have found support, especially among the youth. He continued his criticism of corruption and economic inequality in Pakistan and opposed the Pakistani government's cooperation with the United States to fight militants near the Afghan border. He also launched an attack on Pakistan's political and economic elites, whom he accused of being Westernized and out of touch with Pakistan's religious and cultural norms. Khan's writings have included Warrior Race: A Journey Through the Land of the Tribal Pathans (1993) and Pakistan: A Personal History (2011). In the months leading up to parliamentary elections scheduled for early 2013, Khan and his party drew large crowds to rallies and won the support of several veteran politicians from Pakistan's established parties. Further evidence of Khan's rising political fortunes came in the form of a 2012 opinion poll that showed him as the most popular political figure in Pakistan. Just days before the parliamentary elections in May 2013, Khan injured his head and back when he fell from a platform at a campaign rally. Hours later, he appeared on television from his hospital bed to finally appeal to voters. The election produced PTI's highest tally yet, but the party still won less than half the number of seats won by Nawaz Sharif-led Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N). Khan accused the PML-N of rigging the elections. After his calls for an investigation were not met, he and other opposition leaders led four months of protests in late 2014 to force Sharif to step down.

The protests failed to oust Sharif, but suspicions of corruption were heightened when the Panama Papers linked his family to offshore holdings. Khan organized a new set of protests in late 2016, but called them off at the last minute after the Supreme Court agreed to open an investigation. The investigation disqualified Sharif from public office in 2017 and he was forced to resign from office. Meanwhile, it was also revealed that Khan had offshore holdings but was not disqualified by the Supreme Court in a separate case.

Elections were held the following year, in July 2018. Khan ran on an anti-corruption and anti-poverty platform, although he had to fend off accusations that he was too cozy with the military establishment. The PTI won many seats in the National Assembly, allowing Khan to seek a coalition with independent members of parliament. He became prime minister on August 18.

As prime minister, Khan faced a growing balance of payments crisis. Although the economy is experiencing growth, imports and debt obligations from before his tenure have skyrocketed in recent years, mainly due to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) initiative. Just weeks into his tenure as prime minister, the crisis worsened when the United States withheld a promised $300 million in military aid, saying Pakistan had not done enough to stop terrorism. Khan first tried to seek foreign aid from "friendly countries"; since a dozen previous packages from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had failed to solve Pakistan's macroeconomic problems, his avoidance of an IMF bailout reflected popular IMF fatigue. After failing to secure foreign aid on favorable terms from other countries, Pakistan applied for emergency loans from the IMF. He continued to seek foreign aid from other sources and later received promises of investment from China, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

In addition to courting foreign aid, Khan oversaw several major developments in Pakistan's foreign relations. The country successfully brought the Taliban into negotiations with the United States, improving relations with the country and with neighboring Afghanistan. In February 2019, in a show of force against militants in Kashmir who had recently carried out a suicide attack that killed 40 Indian security personnel, India launched its first airstrike in Pakistan in five decades, raising fears of a new conflict between the two countries. Pakistan downplayed the impact and appeared to avoid escalating the situation. When India re-entered Pakistani airspace, Pakistan shot down two fighters and captured the pilot, but returned the pilot to India soon after. After the incident, Khan launched a crackdown on militants, making arrests, closing a large number of religious schools and vowing to update existing laws to reflect international standards. The COVID-19 pandemic, which began in early 2020, has exacerbated the country's economic woes. . Compared to his critics, Khan was slow to support the lockdown. In contrast, the Sindh provincial government, controlled by an opposition party, quickly imposed a strict lockdown in March. Khan eventually imposed a nationwide lockdown in April; in May, his government began restricting lockdowns to locations with high infection rates.

Meanwhile, Khan continued to face opposition due to his close relationship with the military establishment, a crackdown on militants and the fragile state of the economy. In late 2020, the main opposition parties formed a coalition, the People's Democratic Movement (PDM), with the stated goal of increasing the independence of the civilian government from the military establishment. Protests and rallies organized by the PDM accused Khan of being a puppet of the army and called for his resignation. In March 2021, these parties boycotted a vote of confidence initiated by Khan's government, which he narrowly survived with the support of his coalition partners. Later that year, Khan fell out with the military establishment after a failed attempt by Khan to influence its top posts. As frustration grew over persistent inflation, the opposition decided to hold its own confidence vote in March 2022; key PTI allies withdrew from the ruling coalition and several party members also defected. The vote was held, and on 10 April, Khan became the first prime minister in Pakistan's history to be removed by a no-confidence motion. The economy only worsened under the new PML-N-led government, paving the way for the PTI's remarkable comeback months after it was ousted. In a surprise landslide victory, the PTI won 15 of the 20 seats in the July 2022 parliamentary elections in Punjab province, Pakistan's largest province and a traditional stronghold of the PML-N.

But as Khan tried to push his momentum at rallies held across the country, he ran into significant problems. In August, he came under fire for threatening to sue police officers and judges in Islamabad in a speech. He then faced charges for the speech, the first charge in a wave of legal trouble in the coming months. He was temporarily banned from public office in October after the Electoral Commission alleged that he was guilty of corrupt practices. While leading a protest convoy from the city of Lahore to Islamabad in November, he was shot in the leg in an apparent assassination attempt.