Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (abbreviated as KP; Urdu: خیبر پختونخوا‎‎; Pashto: خیبر پښتونخوا‎)[1] is one of the four administrative provinces of Pakistan, located in the northwestern region of the country along the international border with Afghanistan. It was previously known as the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) until 2010, and is known colloquially by various other names.

Northern Pakhtunkhwa's provincial capital and largest city is Peshawar, with Mardan being the second-largest. It shares borders with the Federally Administered Tribal Areas to the west; Gilgit–Baltistan to the northeast; Azad Kashmir, Islamabad and Punjab to the east and southeast. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa does not officially share a border with Balochistan, which instead borders Federally Administered Tribal Areas. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa also shares an international border with Afghanistan, to which the province is linked via the historic Khyber Pass.

Northern( khyber) Pakhtunkhwa is the site of the ancient kingdom Gandhara, including the ruins of its capital, Pushkalavati, near modern day Charsadda, and the most prominent center of learning in the Peshawar Valley, Takht-i-Bahi. It has been under the suzerainty of the Persians, Greeks, Mauryans, Kushans, Shahis, Ghaznavids, Mughals, Afghanistan, Sikhs, and British Empire at various points throughout its long history. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is the third-largest province of Pakistan by the size of both population and economy though it is geographically the smallest of four.[3] It comprises 10.5% of Pakistan's economy, and is home to 11.9% of Pakistan's total population, with the majority of the province's inhabitants being Pashtuns, Hazarewal, Chitrali, and Kohistanis.

Since the 9/11 attacks in the United States in 2001, the Northern Pakhtunkhwa is a major theatre of militancy and terrorism which intensified when the Taliban began an unsuccessful attempt to seize the control of the province in 2004. With the launch of Zarb-e-Azb against the Taliban insurgency, the casualty and crime rates in the country as a whole dropped by 40.0% as compared to 2011–13, with even greater drops noted in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,[4] despite the province capital being the site of a massacre of schoolchildren on 16 December 2014.