Prince William has paid tribute to the mountaineer Nirmal Purja, who was killed in an avalanche on Broad Peak in Pakistan on 30 July 2026. The Prince of Wales posted a personal message on the official Kensington Palace X account, @KensingtonRoyal, writing that he was "truly saddened" by the loss and signing the message "W" (Royal Central).

Purja, 43, was leading an expedition on the 8,051-metre (26,414 ft) mountain — the world's 12th-highest — when the avalanche struck around midday on Thursday. He and nine others had been missing since then. Elite Exped, the expedition company Purja co-founded, confirmed the deaths following a search operation (Reuters; BBC News). In total, ten people were killed. Purja's climbing partners Pur Bahadur Gurung and Nima Sherpa were among the dead (Royal Central).

Purja's life story read like a sequence of firsts. He served 16 years in the British military, including a decade with the Special Boat Service, the Royal Navy's special forces unit. He was the first Gurkha serving in the British Armed Forces to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Then, in 2019, he climbed all 14 of the world's mountains above 8,000 metres in 189 days, setting a speed record for the feat. That achievement was documented in the Netflix film 14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible.

In 2022, Queen Elizabeth II invested Purja with an MBE — Member of the Order of the British Empire, an honour recognising service to the community — for his services to mountaineering (Royal Central). The award placed him on a list administered by the Cabinet Office and conferred at an investiture at Windsor Castle.

What stands out in Prince William's tribute is its personal register. The message was issued not through a formal palace press release but on social media, in the Prince's own voice and under his own initial — the format the household reserves for messages the Prince writes himself, rather than those drafted by communications staff on his behalf.

Broad Peak, on the Pakistan–China border in the Karakoram range, is a serious objective even by the standards of high-altitude mountaineering. Avalanches on peaks of this scale are a known hazard; the speed at which they sweep a route leaves little time for response. The search operation that followed this one was conducted in conditions that the expedition company did not detail in its public statement.

Purja is survived by his family. The full circumstances of the avalanche are subject to confirmation by Pakistani authorities.