New Delhi | The Hon’ble President of India will confer the Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowships (Akademi Ratna) and Sangeet Natak Akademi Awards (Akademi Puraskar) for the years 2024 and 2025 on 115 artists at a special investiture ceremony scheduled for August 13, 2026, at 11:30 a.m. at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi.
The ceremony will be attended by Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Union Minister for Culture and Tourism; Rao Inderjit Singh, Minister of State for Culture and Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Planning, Statistics and Programme Implementation; Vivek Aggarwal, Secretary, Ministry of Culture; and Dr Sandhya Purecha, Chairman, Sangeet Natak Akademi.
Honouring India’s Performing Arts Traditions
According to the Ministry of Culture, the selected Fellows and Awardees represent different States and Union Territories across India and reflect the breadth of the country’s performing arts traditions. The honours cover disciplines including music, dance, theatre, folk and tribal arts, puppetry, mask making, instrument making and allied theatre arts.
The Sangeet Natak Akademi Awards have been conferred since 1952 and recognise sustained individual contribution and excellence in the performing arts. The Akademi Fellowship, known as Akademi Ratna, carries a purse of ₹3 lakh, while the Akademi Award carries a purse of ₹1 lakh. Both honours are accompanied by a Tamrapatra and Angavastram.
Akademi Fellowships
The Fellowship list for the 2024 and 2025 cycle includes Ramlal Bareth, A V Anand, Rita Ganguly, Puru Dadheech, Chittaranjan Jyotishi, Pasumarthi Rattaiah Sarma and Sudharani Raghupathy.
Awards for 2024
The 2024 Akademi Puraskar recognises artists across a wide range of disciplines. In music, the awardees include Arun Nagesh Kashalkar for Hindustani vocal, Nirmalya Dey for Dhrupad, Bharat Bhushan Goswami for sarangi, Sanjay Mukherjee for tabla, and artists working in Carnatic, creative and experimental, Sugam Sangeet, Abhang and Mand traditions.
The dance awards cover major Indian classical traditions including Bharatanatyam, Kathak, Manipuri, Kuchipudi, Odissi, Sattriya, Mohiniattam and Chhau, along with creative and experimental work and music for dance.
The theatre category includes practitioners in direction, acting, lighting, traditional theatre and allied theatre arts. The 2024 list also recognises folk and tribal practitioners from states and regions including Telangana, Puducherry, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Haryana, Nagaland, Rajasthan, Manipur and Maharashtra, along with instrument-making traditions such as Rudra Veena.
The 2024 awards also recognise contributions in areas such as music, dance, performing arts criticism, dance scholarship and overseas representation of Indian performing arts.
Awards for 2025
The 2025 Akademi Puraskar similarly spans India’s classical, traditional and contemporary performing arts landscape. The music category includes recognition for Dhrupad, Hindustani vocal and instrumental traditions, Carnatic vocal and instrumental music, Sugam Sangeet and Mardala, among others.
In dance, the 2025 awardees represent Bharatanatyam, Kathak, Kathakali, Manipuri, Sattriya, Mohiniattam, Mayurbhanj Chhau and other dance and dance-theatre traditions. The list also recognises practitioners associated with music for dance and Bhagavatamela.
Theatre awardees have been recognised for direction, acting and allied theatre arts, while the folk and tribal category includes practitioners from Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Tripura, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Ladakh, Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram, in addition to traditional instrument and mask making.
The 2025 list further recognises contributions to theatre, Kathak, art photography, performing arts criticism and overseas promotion of Indian music.
Celebrating Cultural Diversity
The two-year award cycle brings together practitioners representing a wide spectrum of India’s performing arts ecosystem. From established classical traditions to regional folk practices, theatre, traditional craftsmanship and allied artistic disciplines, the honours acknowledge the continuing contribution of artists to India’s cultural heritage.
The investiture ceremony at Vigyan Bhawan on August 13, 2026, will formally confer these national-level recognitions on the selected artists for 2024 and 2025.
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