Funeral Ceremonies Announced for Ali Khamenei

The funeral ceremonies for Ali Khamenei, the former leader of the Islamic Republic, will be held from July 4 to July 9. Khamenei was killed on February 28, 2026, in the opening hours of a joint U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, along with a number of senior officials and military commanders.

According to a statement by the committee in charge of commemorating Iran’s former leader, his body will lie in state at the Tehran Mosalla on July 4 and 5, 2026.

According to the same announcement, a funeral procession for Ali Khamenei will be held in Tehran on July 6, 2026. A further funeral ceremony is scheduled to take place in the holy city of Qom on July 7, 2026.

Finally, the late supreme leader is due to be buried on July 9, 2026, at the shrine of the eighth Shia imam in Mashhad, following a funeral procession through Iran’s second-largest city.

However, the long gap between the killing of the former leader of the Islamic Republic and the announcement of the dates for the funeral ceremonies has in recent weeks prompted many questions and much speculation.

During this period, officials of the Islamic Republic provided very little information about when the burial would take place, prompting some critics of the regime on social media to ask, in a mocking tone, why the funeral had still not been held after so much time.

Although officials have not offered a clear explanation for the delay, it appears that security concerns and the possibility of an attack on the funeral may have been one of the main reasons for the delay.

Organising a large-scale ceremony of the kind envisaged by the authorities of the Islamic Republic requires extensive security measures and logistical preparations. During the funeral of Qasem Soleimani, the late commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), in 2020, at least 56 people also lost their lives in a crowd crush.

Officials of the Islamic Republic have said, in connection with the funeral and burial of Ali Khamenei, that “several million people” could attend the ceremonies.

A deputy mayor of Tehran had previously claimed that groups from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Kashmir and other countries in the region had said they were ready to attend the ceremonies, and that some Iraqi officials had even called for Ali Khamenei’s body to be taken to Najaf and Karbala before being buried in Iran.

While the postponement of Ali Khamenei’s funeral and burial during the first days of the war seemed understandable, as time passed and regional tensions eased, the question of why he was still not being laid to rest became ever more pressing. This is despite the fact that the funeral and burial of Ali Larijani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council who was killed during the war, have already been held.

Ali Khamenei was at the helm of the Iranian state for almost 37 years, from 1989 until February 2026, and had the final say on the country’s major policy decisions.

Since being named Ali Khamenei’s successor, Mojtaba Khamenei has not appeared in public, nor has any audio or video recording of him been released. It is still unclear whether the new leader of the Islamic Republic will attend the funeral and burial of his predecessor and father.