National Sports Awards 2026 — Nominations List, Hardik Singh for Khel Ratna

Two aspects of the 2025 nominations stand out against the context of recent Sports Awards cycles.

The first is the number of Khel Ratna nominees. In 2024 — an Olympic year — the ministry gave the award to four athletes in one ceremony, which was itself a reflection of the crowded field of exceptional performances that Paris 2024 produced. In 2025, a year without an Olympics, the panel identified a single athlete across all Indian sports as deserving the highest honour. That single-nominee pattern is not unusual in non-Olympic years; what it signals is that Hardik Singh's case was considered strong enough on its own merits without sharing the platform. His selection also continued a run in which hockey had produced Khel Ratna nominees in consecutive years — Harmanpreet Singh in 2024 and Hardik in 2025.

The second is the complete absence of cricketers. India's women's cricket team won the T20 World Cup in 2024, and the ICC Women's Cricket World Cup final was played in early 2025 — yet no cricketer, male or female, was included in the 2025 nominations. Mohammed Shami remains the most recent cricketer to have received the Arjuna Award, in 2023. The panel's decision attracted some commentary but no formal challenge, and the nominations went forward without revision — unlike the Manu Bhaker situation the previous year.

The Aarti Pal nomination is significant in a different way. Yogasana — competitive yoga — was formally recognised by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports as a competitive sport in 2020, but it had not produced an Arjuna Award nomination in the five years since. Pal is the reigning national and Asian champion in the discipline, which is set to feature as a demonstration sport at the 2026 Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan. Her nomination marks the first time the award system has formally recognised yogasana athletic performance.

Hardik Singh was born in 2001 in Amritsar, Punjab, and came through the junior hockey system before making his senior India debut in 2018. By 2025, at twenty-four years old, he had already played more than 164 international matches for India, establishing himself as the first-choice midfielder in what has become a consistently competitive Indian team.

His case for the Khel Ratna rested on a four-year record that covered two Olympic cycles. At Tokyo 2020, played in 2021, he was part of the team that won India's first Olympic hockey medal since 1980 — a bronze that ended a forty-one-year drought. At Paris 2024, he was again part of the bronze-winning squad, adding a second Olympic medal before his twenty-fourth birthday. Between those Olympics, he had won the FIH Player of the Year award in 2023 — the first Indian to win it in that cycle — and repeated back-to-back Player of the Year recognition at the Hockey India Awards in 2022 and 2023. In 2025, he contributed to India's gold medal at the Hockey Asia Cup.

He had already received the Arjuna Award in 2021, following the Tokyo bronze. The Khel Ratna nomination in 2025 was therefore a step up from that recognition, acknowledging not just the original breakthrough but the sustained level of performance across the four years of the selection window.

If confirmed and presented at the 2026 ceremony, Hardik Singh will become the seventh hockey player to receive the Khel Ratna. The six before him were Dhanraj Pillay (1999–2000), Sardar Singh (2017), Rani Rampal (2020), P.R. Sreejesh (2021), Manpreet Singh (2021), and Harmanpreet Singh (2024). His inclusion would give India's national sport the most Khel Ratna recipients of any sport by a margin.

The twenty-four Arjuna nominees span a broad range of disciplines, with notable new names alongside those who have been building toward this recognition for several years.

Athletics: Tejaswin Shankar — India's premier decathlete who won a historic silver at the 2023 Asian Games and followed it with a second-place finish at the 2025 Asian Championships — leads the athletics nominations alongside Priyanka Goswami (race walk) and Mohammed Afsal (track events).

Badminton: Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand were nominated as the highest-ranked women's doubles pair in Indian badminton. Gayatri is the daughter of Pullela Gopichand, the national coach and former All England champion, which makes her an unusual case of parent-coach and daughter-athlete together in the national system.

Boxing: Narender Berwal received the nomination from the boxing category, continuing a tradition of boxing representation at these awards.

Chess: Two nominees — Vidit Gujrathi, one of India's top grandmasters, and Divya Deshmukh, who became the first Indian to win the FIDE Women's World Cup in 2025.

Gymnastics: Pranati Nayak, who has been India's most consistent gymnastics representative at international competitions over several years.

Hockey: Rajkumar Pal and Lalremsiami Hmarzote from the men's and women's national teams respectively.

Kabaddi: Surjeet Singh and Pooja from the men's and women's national kabaddi teams.

Kho Kho: Nirmala Bhati, reflecting the formal elevation of kho kho as a competitive national discipline.

Para-sports: Ekta Bhyan (para-athletics) and Rudransh Khandelwal (para-shooting) were among the para-athlete nominees.

Polo: Padmanabh Singh, the Maharaja of Jaipur and a national-level polo player, received a nomination in a sport that rarely appears in these lists.

Rowing: Arvind Singh, continuing India's steady development in international rowing events.

Shooting: Akhil Sheoran and Mehuli Ghosh — a two-time World Championship bronze-winner and multiple Asian Championship medallist — were both nominated.

Table Tennis: Sutirtha Mukherjee, whose rise through the national rankings has been one of the stories of Indian table tennis since 2022.

Wrestling: Sonam Malik, who has been competing at the international level since her teens.

Yogasana: Aarti Pal — the first yogasana athlete ever nominated for an Arjuna Award. She holds national and Asian championships and represents a discipline that will appear at the 2026 Asian Games as a demonstration sport.

Deaf sports: Dhanush Srikanth from deaf shooting was also in the list.

First yogasana Arjuna nomination — Aarti Pal
Yogasana as a competitive sport was formally recognised by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports in 2020, but the sports awards system had not included it for five consecutive years. Aarti Pal's nomination in 2025 ends that gap. She is the reigning national and Asian champion in yogasana, and the sport's inclusion as a demonstration event at the 2026 Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games gave the panel additional grounds for inclusion. For exam students, the key fact is: Aarti Pal is the first yogasana athlete ever nominated for the Arjuna Award.

First FIDE Women's World Cup winner — Divya Deshmukh
Chess grandmaster Divya Deshmukh, twenty years old in 2025, became the first Indian to win the FIDE Women's World Cup during the cycle. Her inclusion alongside Vidit Gujrathi gives chess two nominees in the same year — an indicator of how comprehensively Indian chess has moved up the international rankings since the Gukesh championship in 2024.

No cricketers — notable absence
Cricket is the highest-profile sport in India by media attention and commercial activity, but the 2025 nominations included no cricketer of any gender. The selection panel's decision to look only at athletes whose documented international results in the four-year window met the criteria, without automatic consideration for profile, resulted in cricket being absent. Mohammed Shami was the last cricketer in the list, receiving the Arjuna Award in 2023.

Consecutive hockey Khel Ratna nominations
Harmanpreet Singh won the Khel Ratna for 2024 (presented January 2025). Hardik Singh was nominated for the Khel Ratna for 2025. Hockey has therefore produced the top individual sports honour in India in consecutive years — a reflection of the team's sustained performance at the Olympic level since 2020.

• SSC (CGL, CHSL, MTS): Three near-certain questions. First — who was the Khel Ratna nominee for 2025? Hardik Singh, Hockey. Second — what is notable about the 2025 nominations? First yogasana Arjuna nominee (Aarti Pal). Third — were any cricketers nominated? No — the last cricketer was Mohammed Shami (Arjuna 2023). Also lock in: Divya Deshmukh = first Indian to win FIDE Women's World Cup.
• UPSC Prelims: Two angles. First, the hockey Khel Ratna streak — Harmanpreet Singh (2024) and Hardik Singh (2025) are back-to-back hockey recipients. Second, yogasana recognition — the sport was formally recognised by MoYAS in 2020; Aarti Pal's 2025 nomination is the first Arjuna nomination for the discipline, five years later.
• Railway (NTPC, Group D): Basic facts — Hardik Singh nominated for Khel Ratna; vice-captain of Indian hockey team; 2x Olympic bronze medallist (Tokyo 2020, Paris 2024). Gayatri Gopichand's connection: daughter of Pullela Gopichand (national coach, former All England champion). Aarti Pal = first yogasana Arjuna nominee.
• Banking (IBPS, SBI, RBI): Divya Deshmukh = first Indian FIDE Women's World Cup winner (chess). Tejaswin Shankar = decathlete, Asian Games silver. Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand = top Indian women's doubles badminton pair. No cricketer in 2025 nominations.
• Common exam traps:
  1. The 2025 nominations were announced on 24 December 2025; the CEREMONY is expected in January 2026. The award year is 2025 but the ceremony is 2026. Do not confuse nominations with the confirmed awards.
  2. Hardik Singh already received the Arjuna Award in 2021. The Khel Ratna nomination in 2025 is a separate, higher honour — not a repeat Arjuna.
  3. There was ONLY ONE Khel Ratna nominee in 2025 (Hardik Singh) — compared to four in 2024. The number varies by year.
  4. Aarti Pal is the first yogasana ARJUNA nominee — not the first yogasana practitioner to receive any sports recognition. Do not generalise.
  5. Gayatri Gopichand was nominated as an athlete in her own right — do not confuse her with her father Pullela Gopichand's past awards.