Liberal International announced its 2026 Prize for Freedom laureate, Jimmy Lai, a Hong Kong human rights defender, during the 210th Executive Committee meeting in Bangkok, Thailand.

Mr Lai escaped from Communist China to Hong Kong as a young child. In Hong Kong he worked in a garment factory, where he also slept. By 1989 he had become one of Hong Kong’s most successful businessmen, owning the retail fashion brand Giordano, with outlets throughout the region. Throughout his professional life, Mr Lai has been a fearless and outspoken critic of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Following the student protests in China in 1989, and the Tiananmen Square massacre, Mr Lai, already a supporter of the pro-democracy movement, turned his mind to publishing. He saw publishing as a way of ensuring Hong Kongers’ access to free and independent information – which he considered a prerequisite to freedom – and of ensuring the CCP was held to account for the Tiananmen Square massacre and other human rights violations.  Central to what became his publishing group, Next Digital Limited (NDL) was the title Apple Daily, one of Hong Kong’s most popular pro-democratic Chinese-language newspapers, until its forced closure in June 2021. Mr Lai become one of the most well-known and high-profile supporters of the Hong Kong democracy movement and a vocal advocate for peaceful assembly.

Jimmy Lai was jointly nominated by the UK Liberal Democrats, DPP Taiwan, LP Philippines and CNRP Cambodia as the lead nominators, supported by the German FDP, the German Group of LI, and the British Group of LI.