House of Khalifa

The House of Khalifa (Arabic: آل خليفة, romanized: Āl Khalīfah) is the ruling family of the Kingdom of Bahrain. They profess Sunni Islam and belong to the Anizah tribe. Some members of this tribe joined the Utub alliance which migrated from Najd in central Arabia to Kuwait, then ruled all of Qatar, more specifically Al Zubarah, which they built and ruled over before conquering Bahrain in 1783. The Khalifa family repressed the indigenous Baharna population in Bahrain.

The family currently heads an authoritarian regime where political and civil freedoms are substantially curtailed. The current head of the family is King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, who became the Emir of Bahrain in 1999 and proclaimed himself King of Bahrain in 2002, in fact becoming a constitutional monarch.

As of 2025, roughly half of the serving cabinet ministers of Bahrain were members of the Al Khalifa royal family, while the country's Prime Minister, Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, is also from the Al Khalifa family and is the son of the current King.