Your cousin says the Supreme Court has 17 judges. Your friend says 25. A news ticker says two judges resigned last year. Which number is right? The answer is that the number changed, and there is a difference between the maximum the law allows and the judges actually sitting. Here is the position in plain language.
How many judges are in the Supreme Court of Pakistan?
The sanctioned strength is 25 judges, including the Chief Justice. Sanctioned strength is the maximum number the law allows. Parliament set this number through the Supreme Court (Number of Judges) (Amendment) Act, 2024, which raised the strength from 17 to 25. The old figure of 17 came from the Supreme Court (Number of Judges) Act, 1997, and the full text of that Act is on the official Pakistan Code website.
The sanctioned strength is the ceiling, not the count on any given day. Judges retire, some resign, and new judges take oath at different times. In June 2026, Dawn reported the Supreme Court was functioning with a total strength of 18 judges. The gap between 25 and 18 is vacancies, and those seats get filled when the appointment process moves.
Who is the Chief Justice of Pakistan right now?
Justice Yahya Afridi is the Chief Justice of Pakistan. He took office on 26 October 2024, and his term runs to 25 October 2027.
The term is fixed at three years. That is a change brought by the 26th Constitutional Amendment, passed in October 2024. Before that amendment, the most senior judge of the court automatically became the Chief Justice when the office fell vacant. Now a special parliamentary committee picks the Chief Justice from among the three most senior judges.
What does the Constitution say about the court?
The Supreme Court is created by the Constitution itself. Part VII of the Constitution, Articles 175 to 191, deals with the court, and the full text is available online.
Article 176 says the court consists of the Chief Justice of Pakistan and the number of other judges that Parliament decides by law. That is why the number of judges is fixed by an Act of Parliament and not written into the Constitution itself.
Article 177 sets the qualifications. A judge must be a citizen of Pakistan and must have been a judge of a High Court for at least five years, or an advocate of a High Court for at least fifteen years.
Article 179 sets the retirement age. A judge holds office until the age of 65.
What does the Supreme Court do?
The court is the final court of appeal in Pakistan. Under Article 185, it hears appeals against the decisions of the High Courts, and there is no higher court after it. If your case reaches the Supreme Court, its decision is final.
Article 187 lets the court pass any order needed to do complete justice in a case before it, and Article 188 lets it review its own judgments. Article 189 says the decisions of the Supreme Court bind all other courts in Pakistan, and Article 190 says every authority in the country must help the court in its work.
The Supreme Court sits above the High Courts in the court structure. To see the full ladder, read our guide on how many high courts there are in Pakistan.
For the whole ladder, from the Supreme Court down to the courts in every district, read our guide on how many courts there are in Pakistan.
One big change happened in 2025. The 27th Constitutional Amendment, passed in November 2025, moved constitutional cases to a new court, the Federal Constitutional Court of Pakistan. The Supreme Court no longer hears the big constitutional questions. Those now go to the Federal Constitutional Court, which has its own Chief Justice and its own registry. The Supreme Court today is the final court of appeal for ordinary civil and criminal cases.
How are judges appointed?
Appointments run through the Judicial Commission of Pakistan. The commission proposes a name, a parliamentary committee reviews it, and the President makes the appointment. The process comes from Article 175A of the Constitution.
The process works the same way at the provincial level. For one example, read our post on the Chief Justice of the Sindh High Court.
Where does the court sit?
The principal seat of the Supreme Court is in Islamabad. The court also has registries in Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and Quetta, so people outside the capital do not have to travel for every hearing.
Judges usually hear cases in benches of two or three, which is called a division bench. For larger questions of law, the court forms bigger benches.
The court also has a Shariat Appellate Bench, which hears appeals from the Federal Shariat Court. Two members of that bench are appointed on an ad hoc basis, usually from the Federal Shariat Court, and they sit separately from the regular judges.
So how many judges are there, in one line?
Sanctioned strength: 25, including the Chief Justice. In service in mid 2026: around 18. The rest are vacancies, and they are filled through the appointment process.
Why does the number matter to you?
If your case is on appeal, the number of judges decides how fast the court works. More judges means more benches and quicker hearings. Fewer judges means longer queues.
The backlog was one of the reasons Parliament raised the strength. In late 2024, the court's own registrar reported just under 60,000 pending cases, and senators heard that the strength of 17 had not changed since the 1990s while the workload kept growing.
If you have a case stuck in a High Court, read our guide on how to check a high court case status online in Pakistan. And if you want to know how soldiers are tried, our guide to court martial in Pakistan explains the four kinds of military courts.
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