In a rebuke to China, the Tibetan spiritual leader says only his foundation has the power to recognise his successor.
The Dalai Lama has confirmed that he will have a successor chosen in accordance with “past tradition”, ending years of speculation about the centuries-old office.
In a video message on Wednesday, just days before his 90th birthday, the Tibetan spiritual leader said the Gaden Phodrang Foundation, which he established to preserve the institution, will have the power to recognise his future reincarnation.
Tibetan Buddhist leaders will search for his successor, he added, stressing that “no one else has any such authority to interfere in this matter”.
The 14th Dalai Lama said he had received many messages in recent years from Buddhists calling for the office’s continuation.
“In accordance with all these requests, I am affirming that the institution of the Dalai Lama will continue,” he added.
He made the comments during a three-day religious conference in Dharamshala, the northern Indian town where he has been based since 1959, when he fled Tibet for India after a failed uprising against China.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, the Tibetan writer and activist Tenzin Tsundue described the Dalai Lama’s announcement on Wednesday as a “punch in the face” for China, which governs the Tibet Autonomous Region and which has claimed that it has the power to appoint his successor.
The Nobel Peace Prize-winning Dalai Lama, whom China brands a “separatist”, has previously warned Beijing not “to meddle in the system of reincarnation of lamas, let alone that of the Dalai Lama”.
In response to his comments on Wednesday, China said the Dalai Lama’s succession must be approved by the central government in Beijing.
Thupten Ngodup, a spiritual adviser to the Dalai Lama, said that ordinarily there would not be talk of a successor during the current leader’s lifetime.
“But this discussion is happening now mainly because the Chinese government is interfering with the reincarnation of His Holiness,” he told Al Jazeera.
In Tibetan Buddhism, it is believed that the spiritual leader will be reincarnated in the body of a child.
Monks attend the 15th Tibetan Religious Conference in the northern hill town of Dharamshala, India, on July 2, 2025 [Anushree Fadnavis/Reuters]
Born into a farming family on July 6, 1935, the current Dalai Lama was chosen for the role at the age of two.
A search party sent by the Tibetan government picked him after he identified items belonging to his predecessor, according to his website.
In the winter of 1940, he moved to Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, where he became his people’s spiritual leader.
His successor can be of any gender and does not have to hold Tibetan nationality, an official at the Dalai Lama’s trust said on Wednesday.
In 2011, the Dalai Lama handed political authority to a democratically elected Tibetan government-in-exile.