Lucara uncovers 1,305-carat white diamond at Botswana’s Karowe mine
Lucara lifted a 1,305.4-carat white diamond from Karowe, pushing the Botswana mine to 10 stones above 1,000 carats.
Lucara Diamond Corp. has recovered a completely intact 1,305.4-carat white diamond from its Karowe Diamond Mine in Botswana, a find that raises the site’s total to 10 diamonds over 1,000 carats. For a mine already known for extraordinary rough, the new stone reinforces Karowe’s unusual status in the modern diamond trade.
The company announced the recovery on July 13, 2026, saying Karowe is the only diamond mine in the world to have produced 10 diamonds larger than 1,000 carats. The stone was recovered with Lucara’s Mega Diamond Recovery, or MDR, X-ray Transmission technology, a system designed to identify large stones without breaking them in the process. The diamond has not yet been named.
Karowe sits in Botswana’s Orapa/Letlhakane Kimberlite district in the Central District and was fully commissioned in the second quarter of 2012. Lucara describes it as a large-scale operating mine and a leading source of large, high-quality Type IIA diamonds, a category prized for exceptional purity and often associated with the clearest, most coveted white rough.
The recovery adds another chapter to a remarkable run of giant stones from the same mine. Lucara’s earlier finds include Lesedi La Rona at 1,109 carats, Eva Star at 1,080 carats, Seriti at 1,094 carats, Sewelô at 1,758 carats, Constellation at 813 carats and Motswedi at 2,488 carats. Lucara calls Motswedi the largest diamond discovered in more than a century, a distinction that underscores how often Karowe has moved beyond routine production and into the realm of mineral anomaly.
The exact origin of the new stone has not been conclusively pinned down because it was recovered while processing a blend of open-pit material and previously mined, unprocessed stockpiled ore. Even so, the recovery itself is the headline: a massive white diamond preserved whole, from a mine that has repeatedly delivered stones large enough to reset expectations. For Lucara and for Botswana, Karowe remains one of the most closely watched addresses in diamond mining, and each new giant only sharpens that attention.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
