President Droupadi Murmu will present the Sangeet Natak Akademi Awards for 2024 and 2025 on August 13 in New Delhi. The awards honour outstanding practitioners in India’s diverse performing arts, including music, dance, and theatre.
President Droupadi Murmu will confer the Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowships and Awards for 2024 and 2025 at a ceremony in New Delhi on August 13, recognising distinguished contributions to India’s music, dance, theatre and traditional performing arts.
The ceremony is scheduled for 11:30 am at Vigyan Bhawan, with President Murmu attending as the Chief Guest. The honours are being conferred by the Sangeet Natak Akademi, the National Academy of Music, Dance and Drama, which recognises outstanding practitioners across India’s diverse performing-arts traditions.
Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellows (Akademi Ratna)
The list of Akademi Fellows, or Akademi Ratna, for the period includes Ramlal Bareth, AV Anand, Rita Ganguly, Puru Dadheech, Chittaranjan Jyotishi, Pasumarthi Rattaiah Sarma and Sudharani Raghupathy.
Sangeet Natak Akademi Awards 2024
The Sangeet Natak Akademi Awards for 2024 and 2025 recognise artists working across music, dance, theatre, folk and tribal traditions, puppetry, mask making, instrument making and other areas of the performing arts.
2024 Music Awardees
The 2024 Akademi Awards in Music recognise 12 artists representing Hindustani, Carnatic, creative and experimental music and other major musical traditions. The awardees include Arun Kashalkar and Nirmalya Dey in Hindustani vocal traditions, while Bharat Bhushan Goswami has been recognised for Hindustani instrumental music- sarangi and Sanjay Mukherjee for Hindustani instrumental music – tabla. The Carnatic music honours include K. Vageesh, N. Vijay Siva, AS Krishnan and Komanduri Seshadri, covering vocal and instrumental traditions including morchang and violin. Rakesh Chaurasia has been recognised in Creative and Experimental Music for flute. Other major traditions of music are represented by Prabhati Mukherjee for Sugam Sangeet, Anand Bhate for Abhang and Samandar Khan Manganiar for Mand.
2024 Dance Awardees
The 2024 Dance honours span several of India’s major classical and traditional dance forms. The recipients include Rajeswari Sainath for Bharatanatyam, Bipul Chandra Das for Kathak, Rajkumari Thambalsana Devi for Manipuri, Veena Murthy Vijay for Kuchipudi, Bichitrananda Swain for Odissi, Prema Ozah Borbayan for Sattriya, Sreedevi Rajan for Mohiniattam and Nripen Sahis for Chhau. The category also includes Shashidharan Nair, Kalamandalam Unnikrishnan, Surya Narayana Kumara and Keremane Shivananda Hegde, recognising contributions to creative and experimental dance, music for dance and other major traditions of dance and dance theatre, including Yakshagana.
2024 Theatre Awardees
The 2024 Theatre category recognises 10 practitioners across direction, acting, allied theatre arts and traditional theatre. The awardees include Satish Dave, TS Nagabharana, Ravi Chaturvedi and Om Katare for direction. In acting, the honours go to Gummadi Gopala Krishna Rao, Vaagai Chandrasekar and Arun Nalavde. Dhiren Merchant and Dinesh Kumar Poddar have been recognised in Allied Theatre Arts for lighting, while Mukund Marathe has been honoured for Traditional Theatre, Maharashtra.
2024 Folk, Tribal, and Other Traditional Arts Awardees
The 2024 awards also highlight India’s extensive folk and tribal cultural traditions, along with puppetry, mask making and instrument making. The recipients include Dursheti Ramaiah, K Murugan, SC Sharma, Atamjeet Singh, Mahendra Ram, Butan Devi and Sombari Devi (Joint), Ranjit Kumar Nag, Hawa Singh, Veswuzo Phesao, Gulabo Sapera, Lourembam Bedabati, Subhash Narayan Nakashe and Kishorbhai Somabhai Mistry. The awards cover traditions ranging from folk music and dance in Telangana, Puducherry, Karnataka, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha and Haryana to Nautanki in Uttar Pradesh, Kalbeliya dance in Rajasthan and folk traditions of Nagaland and Manipur. The category also includes recognition for the making of traditional instruments such as the Rudra Veena.
2024 Overall Contribution and Other Categories
Five artists have been recognised in the 2024 Overall and Others category. TS Sathyavathi and Voleti Rangamani have received honours for overall contribution in music and dance respectively. Shubhada Manohar Varadkar has been recognised for Scholarship in Performing Arts- Dance, while Tapati Chowdhurie has received recognition for Art Critique- Performing Arts. Sunanda Nair has been honoured in the Overseas category for her contribution to Dance (Mohiniattam).
Sangeet Natak Akademi Awards 2025
The 2025 Sangeet Natak Akademi Awards similarly cover a wide range of India’s classical, traditional and contemporary performing arts.
2025 Music Awardees
The 2025 Music awardees include Krishna Mohan Pathak, Suresh Gandharv, Shailesh Bhagwat, Jyoti Ganpati Hegde, Pantula Rama, Papanasam Ashok Ramani, Tripoonithura N Radhakrishnan, Anoor R Anantha Krishna Sharma, D Srinivas, Yugantar Sindoor, Satchidananda Das and Seema Anil Sehgal. The honours cover Hindustani vocal and instrumental traditions, including shehnai and Rudra Veena, as well as Carnatic vocal and instrumental traditions including ghatam, mridangam and veena. Other major traditions of music recognised include Sugam Sangeet and Mardala.
2025 Dance Awardees
The 2025 Dance honours include Roja Kanan for Bharatanatyam and Krishan Mohan Mishra (Maharaj), Vaswati Mishra and Ram Mohan Maharaj (Trio) for Kathak. Other recipients include Kalamandalam Krishnakumar for Kathakali, Irengbam Nalini Devi for Manipuri, P Nagajothy and Seetha Nagajothy (Joint) for Kuchipudi, Ileana Citaristi for Odissi, Mallika Kandali for Sattriya and Girija Chandran for Mohiniattam. The category also recognises Pagulu Jena for Chhau- Mayurbhanj, K. Hariprasad for Music for Dance – Bharatanatyam, Bhaskar Jyoti Ojah for Music for Dance- Sattriya and S Kumar for Other Major Traditions of Dance and Dance Theatre – Bhagavatamela.
2025 Theatre Awardees
The 2025 Theatre honours recognise practitioners in direction, acting and allied theatre arts. The recipients include Kapildev Chandrakant Shukla, Kallol Bhattacharyya, Navdeep Kaur, Pramod Dnyandeo Pawar and Subodh Patnaik for direction. The acting honours go to Chetana Das, Suresh Kumar Hazzu and Makhan Lal Saraf. Ashok Patki has been recognised for Allied Theatre Arts- Music for Theatre, while Usha Nangiar has been honoured for Other Major Traditions of Theatre- Nangiarkoothu.
2025 Traditional and Folk Arts Awardees
The 2025 awards also celebrate traditional artistic practices from across the country. The recipients include Anup Ranjan Pandey, Bheru Singh Chouhan, Surjya Kumar Debbarma, Joginder Singh Habbi, Romalo Ram, Harmanpreet Singh, Ali Mohammad, Domin Karbak, K Rosiama, Rani Maring, Sushanta Kumar Mahapatra, Mangla Prasad Sharma and Sindhe Chithambara Rao. The honours cover folk music and dance from Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Tripura, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Ladakh, Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram. The category also includes recognition for instrument making, Chhau mask making and shadow puppetry. In particular, Sindhe Chithambara Rao has been recognised for Shadow Puppet of Andhra Pradesh.
2025 Overall Contribution and Other Categories
The 2025 Overall and Others category includes Shiv Narayan Jha (Kunal), Maneesha Sathe, Rakesh Sinha, Manjari Sinha and TS Nandakumar. The honours recognise Overall Contribution in Theatre, Overall Contribution in Dance- Kathak, Overall Contribution- Art Photography, Art Critique- Performing Arts and Overseas- Music (Mridangam).
Award Significance and Ceremony Details
The Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowships and Awards represent one of India’s major national recognitions for practitioners in the performing arts. The Akademi’s recognition extends beyond performers to include teachers, researchers, critics, traditional practitioners and artists involved in the preservation of instruments, masks and other elements essential to India’s performing-arts traditions. Here’s the full list: View this post on Instagram A post shared by Sangeet Natak Akademi (@sangeetnatakakademi)
The ceremony will be attended by Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Minister of Culture and Tourism; Rao Inderjit Singh, Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Planning, Statistics and Programme Implementation and Minister of State for Culture; Dr Sandhya Purecha, Chairman of the Sangeet Natak Akademi; and Vivek Aggarwal, Secretary, Ministry of Culture.
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