India’s sporting honours have once again brought together champions from disciplines that rarely share the same spotlight. From athletics and chess to badminton, hockey, shooting and kabaddi, the National Sports Awards 2025 recognise a generation that has been steadily expanding India’s sporting identity beyond cricket.
The Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports announced the National Sports Awards 2025 on Tuesday, with decathlete Tejaswin Shankar, chess stars Divya Deshmukh and Vidit Gujrathi, badminton pair Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand, and hockey players Lalremsiami and Rajkumar Pal among the Arjuna Award recipients.
The awards were decided on the recommendations of a selection committee chaired by former Supreme Court judge Justice (Retd.) Arun Kumar Mishra. The Arjuna Award recognises athletes for sustained outstanding performances, while the Dronacharya Award honours coaches who have played a significant role in producing sporting excellence. The Sports Ministry describes the National Sports Awards as annual honours for athletes, coaches and organisations contributing to Indian sport.
For Shankar, the honour comes after another landmark phase in his career. The decathlete has emerged as one of India’s most prominent multi-event athletes and added a Commonwealth Games bronze medal in Glasgow in 2026. He finished third behind Grenada’s Lindon Victor and Canada’s Pierce LePage, giving India another athletics medal at the Games.
Shankar’s recognition is particularly significant because the decathlon remains one of the most demanding events in athletics, requiring competitors to perform across 10 disciplines. His ability to compete internationally in such a demanding event has made him an important figure in India’s push to develop strength beyond individual track and field disciplines. Chess has also received a major boost through the recognition of Divya Deshmukh and Vidit Gujrathi.
Deshmukh’s selection comes after a breakthrough year that placed her firmly among the leading names in Indian chess. She won the 2025 FIDE Women’s World Cup and subsequently became India’s first female player to win the prestigious event. Her success also formed part of a wider rise in Indian women’s chess, with Deshmukh following in the footsteps of players such as Koneru Humpy and Harika Dronavalli.
Gujrathi, meanwhile, has been one of India’s established elite players for more than a decade. His inclusion alongside Deshmukh reflects both continuity and transition in Indian chess, with a new generation increasingly challenging the country’s established stars.
Badminton’s women’s doubles combination of Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand also received recognition. The pair have become one of India’s leading doubles combinations, carrying the country’s hopes in a discipline where India has enjoyed significant success over the past decade.
Hockey has two representatives in Lalremsiami and Rajkumar Pal. Both have been important members of India’s international teams, with Lalremsiami becoming one of the prominent figures in Indian women’s hockey and Pal establishing himself as a key player in the men’s side. The wider list reflects the increasingly broad nature of Indian sporting achievement. Athletes from boxing, kabaddi, rowing, shooting, para-sport and deaf shooting have also been recognised.
The full Arjuna Award list includes Tejaswin Shankar, Muhammed Ajmal V, Priyanka Goswami, Treesa Jolly, Pullela Gayatri Gopichand, Narender, Vidit Santosh Gujrathi, Divya Jitendra Deshmukh, Dhanush Srikanth, Lalremsiami, Rajkumar Pal, Surjeet, Pooja, Rudransh Khandelwal, Ekta Bhyan, Arvind Singh and Akhil Sheoran.
The Arjuna Award in the Lifetime category has gone to former Indian international footballer I. Arumainayagam. The Dronacharya Awards recognise five coaches across the regular and lifetime categories. Parveer Singh, Chhote Lal Yadav and Neha Nandkumar Chavan have been selected in the regular category, while Dharmendra Singh Yadav and Virender Kumar have been recognised in the lifetime category.
The Rashtriya Khel Protsahan Puraskar has also gone to the Army Paralympic Node, Pune, for its contribution to sports promotion and development. One of the biggest talking points from this year’s honours, however, is the absence of a Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna recipient. The Khel Ratna is India’s highest sporting honour and is intended to recognise the most outstanding sporting performance over a four-year period.
The absence is notable given that the selection process had initially generated considerable attention around several high-profile athletes. In December 2025, reports indicated that the selection committee had considered multiple candidates, with hockey’s Hardik Singh emerging as a prominent name during the recommendation process.
The final awards list instead places the emphasis on sustained excellence across a much wider sporting landscape. That may ultimately be the most important message from the National Sports Awards 2025. India’s sporting story is no longer being written by a handful of familiar names or a single discipline.
It is being built by decathletes competing across 10 events, chess players winning world titles, badminton pairs climbing the international rankings, hockey players sustaining India’s team-sport tradition and para-athletes continuing to reshape expectations. The medals may come on different fields, courts and tracks. On award night, however, they share the same stage.
