Tarique makes TIME 100 most influential list after landslide return to power

The magazine says corruption allegations from the 2000s, although later quashed by the courts, can shorten Tarique’s potential “honeymoon period” compared with others

Prime Minister Tarique Rahman has been named in TIME magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

The 2026 list, published on Wednesday, includes 24 politicians and state leaders.

Among them are Pope Leo, US President Donald Trump, China President Xi Jinping, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and Nepal Prime Minister Balendra Shah.

The profile on Tarique was written by TIME Editor-at-large and geopolitics expert Charlie Campbell.

It says that just months ago, Tarique was living “a carefree life of exile in leafy southwest London”.

But the 2024 ousting of Bangladesh’s “autocratic” prime minister Sheikh Hasina propelled the 57-year-old from an opposition agitator to a national leader in waiting.

“After 17 years estranged from his homeland,” he fulfilled that destiny in February by securing a landslide electoral victory.

The magazine notes that with this win, Tarique followed in the footsteps of his mother Khaleda Zia, the country’s first female prime minister, who died just five days after his return to Dhaka.

“When Rahman sat down with TIME in January, his grief was still raw,” the profile says.

Yet he pledged to channel that grief into uniting the country of 175 million people and revitalising South Asia’s second-largest economy.

Bangladesh is currently grappling with high inflation and youth unemployment, while relations with regional power India have reached a historic low, posing major challenges for the new leader.

TIME also notes that corruption allegations from the 2000s -- although later quashed by the courts -- could shorten Tarique’s potential “honeymoon period” compared with others.

After years in exile, however, he is determined not to waste time.

“We need to work together, unite,” Tarique says, “So that people can have their political rights.”

Reacting to the recognition, his Advisor Mahdi Amin wrote in a Facebook post that the global acknowledgement marked “a victory of democracy, the people, and Bangladesh”.

He added that Tarique has demonstrated that “the true strength of a leader lies not in power, but in the rights of the people”, and emphasised unity over division in steering the country forward.