Indian teacher who taught on Mumbai slum walls wins $1m Global Teacher Prize at WGS 2026

Dubai: India’s Rouble Nagi, an art and social science teacher from Mumbai, has won the $1-million Global Teacher Prize 2026 at the World Governments Summit in Dubai.

The award was presented by Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Defence, alongside Sunny Varkey, founder of GEMS Education and the Varkey Foundation.

Nagi was recognised for her work bringing education to slums and rural communities across India through Misaal India and the Rouble Nagi Art Foundation — initiatives that use art as a gateway to learning.

Over the last 20 years, her movement has set up more than 800 learning centres, mobilised 600 volunteers and paid teachers, and built a model that reaches children often excluded from formal education, according to a Hindustan Times report.

Her classrooms don’t always have four walls. Nagi’s “Living Walls of Learning” murals turn neighbourhood lanes and courtyards into permanent textbooks — visible to entire communities.

Her approach blends academics with life skills, vocational exposure and creative expression, helping children build confidence, agency and aspiration.

“This gives me the momentum to go further — reaching more children, breaking down barriers, and ensuring every learner can not only access education, but stay and succeed,” Nagi had said in an earlier statement.

Now in its tenth year, the Global Teacher Prize — run by the Varkey Foundation with UNESCO — has received over 100,000 nominations worldwide, spotlighting teachers shaping lives far beyond the classroom.

Last year, a teacher from Saudi Arabia, Mansour bin Abdullah Al-Mansour, who has volunteered over 3,000 hours helping his community, including transforming the lives of hundreds of gifted orphans and prisoners, was named the winner of the GEMS Education Global Teacher Prize.