On 8 and 9 September 2025 a youth-led mass uprising known as the Gen Z protests forced Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli of Nepal to resign, after a government ban on major social media platforms ignited long-simmering anger over corruption and inequality.
On 4 September the government had ordered the shutdown of 26 platforms, including Facebook, YouTube, X, and WhatsApp, for failing to register under new rules, a move many Nepalis saw as censorship. On 8 September thousands of young demonstrators, many students in school uniforms, gathered near the federal parliament in Kathmandu under banners against corruption; the protest turned deadly when security forces fired on the crowd after barricades were breached, killing roughly 19 people that day. That night the government lifted the social media ban, but the killings inflamed the movement, and on 9 September protesters set fire to the parliament, government buildings, and politicians' homes.
Oli resigned on 9 September as his ministers quit around him and civilian governance neared collapse. He was reported to have fled to an army barracks. On 10 September the army imposed a nationwide curfew and took charge of security, and after Gen Z representatives negotiated through the Discord platform, an agreement was reached with the president to dissolve parliament and appoint former chief justice Sushila Karki as interim prime minister on 12 September.
Researched Details
Researched
Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.
Target identified in Coup Atlas research: PM K.P. Sharma Oli, who resigned amid the uprising and took refuge at an army barracks; not physically harmed
RESEARCHED NAME
Key figures
K.P. Sharma Oli (prime minister who resigned)
Sushila Karki (former chief justice named interim prime minister)
Ashok Raj Sigdel (army chief)
the Gen Z protest movement
Sources
In Nepal the 2025 Gen Z protests began as youth-led demonstrations against a government ban on major social media platforms and long-standing corruption and inequality, and on 9 September 2025 Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli, along with a few government ministers, resigned; on 12 September Sushila Karki was appointed interim prime minister.
SOURCE REVIEWEDWikipedia, 2025 Nepalese Gen Z protestsopen source ↗
Clashes between protesters and security forces broke out on 8 September, and by 9 September the parliament building and other government offices were in flames and Prime Minister Oli had resigned; the ban was lifted, but protests continued until the army imposed a nationwide curfew on 10 September, with the violence leaving dozens dead.
The interim government led by former chief justice Sushila Karki took charge after the prime minister was forced to resign due to the protests, and on 12 September Gen Z representatives, after consultation with supporters on the Discord platform, reached an agreement with the president to dissolve parliament and appoint Karki as head of an interim government that would conduct fresh elections.
Oli directed his party ministers not to resign and then resigned his own office, after which he fled to an army barracks outside the Kathmandu Valley, with videos surfacing of him escaping by helicopter, and the newly formed interim government later arrested him over the crackdown on protesters, though he was released in April 2026 on a Supreme Court order.
SOURCE REVIEWEDWikipedia, 2025 Nepalese Gen Z protestsopen source ↗
Editorial Note
AFTER the training cutoff (Sept 2025); researched fresh this session from multiple sources (Wikipedia, Britannica, HRW, Rest of World). EXAMINED the coding, as flagged. Coded fate not physically harmed is verified: Oli resigned and took shelter at an army barracks (he was arrested months later, then released in April 2026). Coded as a military coup on 09-08; the character is layered, like Bangladesh 2024 and Sri Lanka 2022: fundamentally a leaderless Gen Z popular uprising over the social-media ban and corruption, but the army's decisive role, imposing the curfew on 10 September, taking charge of security, brokering the transition, and the army chief convening the Gen Z and political stakeholders, gives it a military-intervention dimension that supports the label. The resulting interim government was civilian (Karki), not a junta. Part of a 2020s South Asian pattern of youth-driven ousters (Sri Lanka 2022, Bangladesh 2024).
Cross-Reference
Only one dataset carries it. One of the three reference datasets we check against carries this event; the others do not list it. That is not a contradiction — the datasets cover different periods and use different thresholds — but it means the record has had less outside corroboration.
Identifiers for finding this same event in the other datasets:
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: PM K.P. Sharma Oli, who resigned amid the uprising and took refuge at an army barracks; not physically harmed.
Baseline coding: Incumbent executive removed from power. Recorded leader fate: deposed; not physically harmed. The baseline file does not name individual targets; researched names are kept in a separate layer.
Baseline Dataset Citation
Cline Center Coup d’État Project Dataset, v2.2.2
Peyton, Buddy, Joseph Bajjalieh, Michael Martin, and Andrea Gerald. 2026. Cline Center Coup d’État Project Dataset. Cline Center for Advanced Social Research. V.2.2.2. February 17. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. doi: 10.13012/B2IDB-9651987_V10
This is the citation trail carried by the baseline dataset, grouped by outlet and rejoined from the line-wrapped original. Coup Atlas has not independently re-checked every document; read the original before citing a specific claim. URLs the import damaged beyond safe repair are shown as plain text and listed in citations-report.md. How this list is built →