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National Sports Awards 2025: 17 Arjuna Awards, No Khel Ratna Recipient — SSC Current Affairs 2026

Awards & Honours18 Aug 2026

National Sports Awards 2025: 17 Arjuna Awards, No Khel Ratna Recipient

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1
The Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports announced the National Sports Awards 2025 on 18 August 2026.
2
Seventeen athletes were selected for the Arjuna Award, including chess players Divya Deshmukh and Vidit Gujarathi and high jumper Tejaswin Shankar.
3
No sportsperson was chosen for the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award, India's highest sporting honour, for 2025.
4
Former footballer I. Arumainayagam received the Arjuna Award (Lifetime), and five coaches received the Dronacharya Award across the regular and lifetime categories.
5
The Army Paralympic Node, Pune won the Rashtriya Khel Protsahan Puruskar 2025; the list was finalised by a committee chaired by Justice (Retd.) Arun Kumar Mishra.

●Announced on 18 August 2026 by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports for the award year 2025
●Arjuna Award: 17 sportspersons across athletics, badminton, boxing, chess, hockey, kabaddi, rowing, shooting and para-sport
●Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna: no recipient selected for 2025
●Arjuna Award (Lifetime): I. Arumainayagam, football
●Dronacharya Award: 3 coaches in the regular category, 2 in the lifetime category
●Rashtriya Khel Protsahan Puruskar: Army Paralympic Node, Pune
●Selection committee chaired by Justice (Retd.) Arun Kumar Mishra, former judge of the Supreme Court of India

Arjuna Award (regular)

17 athletes

Chess awardees

Divya Jitendra Deshmukh, Vidit Santosh Gujarathi

Badminton awardees

Treesa Jolly, Pullela Gayatri Gopichand

Athletics awardees

Tejaswin Shankar, Muhammed Ajmal V, Priyanka Goswami

Hockey awardees

Lalremsiami, Rajkumar Pal

Kabaddi awardees

Surjeet, Pooja

Shooting awardees

Akhil Sheoran (shooting), Dhanush Srikanth (deaf shooting), Rudransh Khandelwal (para-shooting)

Other awardees

Narender (boxing), Ekta Bhyan (para-athletics), Arvind Singh (rowing)

Dronacharya (regular)

Parveer Singh (athletics), Chhote Lal Yadav (boxing), Neha Nandkumar Chavan (shooting)

Dronacharya (lifetime)

Dharmendra Singh Yadav (boxing), Virender Kumar (wrestling)

Award	Instituted	Given for
Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna	1991-92	The most outstanding sporting performance; India's highest sporting honour
Arjuna Award	1961	Consistently outstanding performance at the international level
Dronacharya Award	1985	Coaches who produce medal-winning sportspersons
Rashtriya Khel Protsahan Puruskar	2009	Corporate bodies, institutions and organisations that promote sport

The Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna is not a guaranteed annual award — it is conferred only when the selection committee finds a performance of the required standard, and the committee headed by Justice (Retd.) Arun Kumar Mishra recommended no name for 2025. The contrast with the previous cycle is sharp: for 2024 the honour went to four athletes — shooter Manu Bhaker, hockey captain Harmanpreet Singh, world chess champion D. Gukesh and para high-jumper Praveen Kumar. The award was instituted in 1991-92 as the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna and was renamed after hockey legend Major Dhyan Chand in 2021. It carries a cash prize of Rs 25 lakh, against Rs 15 lakh for the Arjuna Award. Nominations for 2025 were processed through a dedicated online portal that also allowed athletes and organisations to apply for themselves rather than wait to be nominated by a federation.

●Divya Deshmukh (chess) — won the FIDE Women's World Cup in 2025 at Batumi, Georgia, beating Koneru Humpy in the tie-break, and became India's 88th Grandmaster
●Vidit Gujarathi (chess) — Grandmaster and Chess Olympiad gold medallist for India
●Treesa Jolly and Pullela Gayatri Gopichand (badminton) — India's leading women's doubles pair
●I. Arumainayagam (football) — member of India's gold-winning team at the 1962 Asian Games, chosen for the Arjuna Award (Lifetime)
●Army Paralympic Node, Pune — the institution honoured for promoting para-sport

The National Sports Awards are the government's annual audit of Indian sport, and the 2025 list reads as one: breadth at the base and a gap at the top. Para-sport and deaf sport occupy three of the seventeen Arjuna slots, chess two, and kabaddi two, which reflects where India has been winning internationally. At the same time an empty Khel Ratna column signals that the committee did not consider any single performance in the qualifying period to be of the very highest order — a judgment that matters because the award is a selection, not a rotation.

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Expected Questions

★Who was conferred the Arjuna Award (Lifetime) in the National Sports Awards 2025?
★How many sportspersons received the Arjuna Award for 2025?
★Which award is given to coaches in India, and in which year was it instituted?

Key Terms

Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna

India's highest sporting honour, instituted in 1991-92 as the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna and renamed in 2021; carries Rs 25 lakh

Arjuna Award

Instituted in 1961 for consistently outstanding performance at the international level; carries Rs 15 lakh

Dronacharya Award

Instituted in 1985 for coaches, with regular and lifetime categories

Rashtriya Khel Protsahan Puruskar

Instituted in 2009 for corporate bodies, institutions and organisations that promote sport

priority_highMust Remember

•17 Arjuna Awards for 2025; no Khel Ratna recipient
•Selection committee chaired by Justice (Retd.) Arun Kumar Mishra
•Khel Ratna 2024 went to Manu Bhaker, Harmanpreet Singh, D. Gukesh and Praveen Kumar
•National Sports Awards are conferred by the President at Rashtrapati Bhavan; National Sports Day is 29 August, the birth anniversary of Major Dhyan Chand

tips_and_updatesExam Tips

•Learn the four awards with their institution years as a set — 1961 (Arjuna), 1985 (Dronacharya), 1991-92 (Khel Ratna), 2009 (Rashtriya Khel Protsahan Puruskar). Examiners test the pairing, not the list.
•Remember which awards go to individuals and which to institutions: the Rashtriya Khel Protsahan Puruskar is the odd one out.

Question 1 of 3Score: 0/0

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