List of Famous people born in Kandahar, Afghanistan

Mawlawi Hibatullah Akhundzada is a hardline religious scholar and the leader of the Taliban, an armed militant group that was the former government of Afghanistan.

Hamid Karzai is an Afghan politician who was the president of Afghanistan from 22 December 2001 to 29 September 2014. He is also the leader of the Popalzai Durrani tribe of Pashtuns.

Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour was the leader of the Taliban, an Islamic fundamentalist political movement in Afghanistan, from 29 July 2015 to 21 May 2016, when Mansour was killed in a drone strike by the United States in Pakistan.

Zeenat Quraishi Karzai is the wife of former President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai and was the First Lady of Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014. Originally from the city of Kandahar, she moved to Kabul, where she lived at the Presidential Palace with her husband and their four children.

Abdul Raziq Achakzai was a police chief in the Afghan National Police. His father and uncle were killed by the Taliban in 1994. Raziq started fighting against the Taliban in 2001, eventually overthrowing them in the Kandahar area. He was considered to be one of the most powerful security officials in Afghanistan for the last few years of his life. After surviving several assassination attempts over the years by the Taliban, Raziq was killed in an insider attack by a bodyguard of the provincial governor, who opened fire on him and other security officials after a meeting with the U.S. Army General Scott Miller at the governor's compound in Kandahar. Raziq was succeeded by his brother, Tadeen Khan, who has no military related experience. Tadeen's nomination was a result of heavy pressure from powerful tribal elders who pressured the Afghan government to overlook his lack of experience and training.

Dr. Mohammad Sadiq Fitrat, born as Sadiq Fitrat Habibi,, known professionally as Nashenas, is one of the oldest surviving musicians from Afghanistan. His fame began in the late 1950s, and since then he has produced many albums consisting of Pashto, Dari, and Urdu songs. He is known as "the Afghan Saigal".

Nur Jahan was the twentieth wife of the Mughal emperor Jahangir.

Ahmed Wali Karzai was a politician in Afghanistan who served as Chairman of the Kandahar Provincial Council from 2005 until his death. He was the younger paternal half-brother of former Afghan President Hamid Karzai and an elder of the Popalzai tribe. Wali Karzai formerly lived in the United States, where he managed a restaurant owned by his family. He returned to Afghanistan following the removal of the Taliban government in late 2001. He has been accused of political corruption and was allegedly on the CIA payroll. He was assassinated by one of his close bodyguards, Sardar Mohammad, on 12 July 2011.

Mirwais Hotak, (1673–1715), was an influential Pashtun from Kandahar, Afghanistan, who was the founder of the Hotak dynasty that existed from 1709 to 1738.

Dost Mohammad Khan was the founder of the Barakzai dynasty and one of the prominent rulers of Afghanistan during the First Anglo-Afghan War. With the decline of the Durrani dynasty, he became Emir of Afghanistan from 1823 to 1839 and then from 1843 to 1863. An ethnic Pashtun, he was the 11th son of Sardar Payendah Khan who was killed in 1799 by Zaman Shah Durrani. At the start of his rule in March 1823, the Afghans lost their former stronghold of Peshawar Valley to the Sikh Khalsa Army of Ranjit Singh at the Battle of Nowshera. The Afghan forces in the battle were supported by Azim Khan, half-brother of Dost Mohammad Khan.