India Names 17 Athletes for Arjuna Award 2026, Skips Khel Ratna

India's Sports Ministry on Tuesday announced the recipients of the Arjuna Award 2026, honouring 17 athletes drawn from disciplines ranging from badminton and chess to athletics, hockey, boxing, shooting, rowing, kabaddi and para-sports. Notably, the ministry did not name anyone for the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna, the country's highest sporting honour, this year.

Badminton and chess lead the list

Among the headline names are badminton doubles pair Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand, who have been among India's most consistent performers on the international doubles circuit. Chess found strong representation too, with World Cup-winning player Divya Deshmukh and Grandmaster Vidit Gujrathi both included in the list, reflecting Indian chess's rapid rise on the global stage in recent years.

Track and field, hockey and boxing honoured

Sprinter Muhammed Ajmal V, who won gold in the 4x400m relay at the 2023 Asian Games and followed it with a silver at the Asian Athletics Championships the same year, was among the athletics contingent. He was joined by sprinter and race walker Priyanka Goswami and decathlete-high jumper Tejaswin Shankar, who recently became the first Indian to win a medal in the decathlon at the Commonwealth Games with a bronze-medal performance.

Hockey internationals Lalremsiami and Rajkumar Pal were also recognised, alongside Glasgow Commonwealth Games silver medallist boxer Narender.

Shooting, rowing and para-sports recognised

The shooting contingent included Akhil Sheoran and para-shooter Rudransh Khandelwal, while young deaf rifle shooter Dhanush Srikanth also featured on the list, underlining the ministry's continued push to recognise athletes across the disability sports spectrum. Para-athlete Ekta Bhyan, rower Arvind Singh, and kabaddi players Surjeet and Pooja rounded out the group of awardees.

Lifetime achievement honour

Former footballer I Arumainayagam, part of India's gold medal-winning squad at the 1962 Asian Games, was conferred the Arjuna Award for Lifetime Achievement, a recognition reserved for athletes whose contributions to Indian sport are assessed over the course of a full career rather than a single season or cycle.

No Khel Ratna this year

The absence of a Khel Ratna recipient this year has drawn attention, since the award is typically presented alongside the Arjuna Awards as part of the annual National Sports Awards ceremony. The Sports Ministry did not offer a detailed public explanation for the decision, though such gaps have occurred in the past when no candidate was judged to meet the threshold set for the honour in a given year.

The National Sports Awards, instituted to recognise outstanding achievement in Indian sport, are typically presented by the President of India at a ceremony in New Delhi. The Arjuna Award specifically recognises consistent excellence over a four-year period and has, over the decades, gone on to become one of the most sought-after honours for athletes across disciplines in the country.

This year's list reflects the breadth of India's sporting rise beyond its traditional strongholds of cricket and hockey, with chess, para-sports and combat sports all finding representation among the honourees. The recognition also comes at a time when several of the awardees, including Tejaswin Shankar and the badminton doubles pairing, remain active and competing internationally, adding a forward-looking dimension to what is otherwise a retrospective honour.

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