National Sports Awards 2025:: 17 Sportspersons Selected for Arjuna Award
The Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports has announced the National Sports Awards 2025, recognising outstanding performances and contributions by Indian sportspersons across various sporting disciplines. The awards have been finalised on the recommendations of a selection committee headed by former Supreme Court judge Justice (Retd.) Arun Kumar Mishra.
A total of 17 sportspersons have been selected for the Arjuna Award for outstanding performance in Sports and Games 2025. The list includes prominent names such as chess player Divya Jitendra Deshmukh, badminton player Pullela Gayatri Gopichand, boxer Narender, and athletes Tejaswin Shankar, Muhammed Ajmal V and Priyanka Goswami.
The Arjuna Award recognises sustained sporting performance over the preceding four years, along with qualities of leadership, sportsmanship and discipline. The 2025 awardees represent a broad range of disciplines, including athletics, badminton, boxing, chess, hockey, kabaddi, para-sports, rowing and shooting.
The complete Arjuna Award list includes Tejaswin Shankar, Muhammed Ajmal V, Priyanka Goswami, Treesa Jolly, Pullela Gayatri Gopichand, Narender, Vidit Santosh Gujarathi, Divya Jitendra Deshmukh, Dhanush Srikanth, Lalremsiami, Rajkumar Pal, Surjeet, Pooja, Rudransh Khandelwal, Ekta Bhyan, Arvind Singh and Akhil Sheoran.
The recognition of Divya Deshmukh and Vidit Gujarathi highlights India’s growing strength in chess, while the selection of Gayatri Gopichand and Treesa Jolly reflects the country’s continued development in badminton. The inclusion of para-sport athletes and a deaf shooting athlete also underlines the broad-based nature of the national sports recognition framework.
Notably, no sportsperson has been selected for the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award for 2025. The decision places particular focus this year on recognising sustained excellence through the Arjuna Awards and other categories of the National Sports Awards.
The National Sports Awards are an important institutional mechanism for acknowledging sporting excellence and encouraging athletes to pursue higher standards of performance at national and international levels. The 2025 selections reflect the Government’s continued emphasis on recognising achievement across both mainstream and para-sport disciplines.
The Winners of the National Sports Awards 🙌✨#NationalSportsAwards2025 pic.twitter.com/pha4xt7GJs— Dept of Sports, Govt of India (@IndiaSports) August 18, 2026
