The National Water Affairs Regulation Authority (NWARA) and ICIMOD worked together to develop information on glaciers and glacial lakes in Afghanistan through ICIMOD’s SERVIR Hindu Kush Himalaya (SERVIR-HKH) Initiative. Afghanistan’s glacier dataset (1990–2015) was released in 2018. The General Directorate of Water Resources of NWARA and ICIMOD then prepared datasets on glacial lakes in Afghanistan (1990–2015). This is a first-of-its-kind dataset on the distribution of glacial lakes in Afghanistan and observed changes since the 1990s that covers the whole of Afghanistan using consistent data sources and methods.