National Sports Awards 2025: 17 named for Arjuna Awards including Divya Deshmukh, Gayatri Gopichand and Narender

The Ministry of Youth Affairs & Sports on Tuesday (August 18, 2026) announced the National Sports Awards 2025, naming 17 sportspersons for the Arjuna Awards. Among those listed were World Cup winning chess player Divya Deshmukh, badminton player Gayatri Gopichand and Glasgow Commonwealth Games silver-medallist boxer Narender.

Also included among the Arjuna Awardees were Grandmaster Vidit Gujrathi, women’s doubles player Treesa Jolly, decathlete and high jumper Tejaswin Shankar, and young deaf rifle shooter Dhanush Srikanth. “Based on the recommendations of the Selection Committee chaired by a former Judge of the Supreme Court of India, Justice (Retd.) Arun Kumar Mishra, the Government has decided to confer awards on the following sportspersons, coaches and entities under various categories,” the Ministry said in a release. The Sports Ministry did not name any athlete for the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award this year.

The Ministry conferred the Arjuna Award for ‘Lifetime Achievement’ on footballer I Arumainayagam, noting his status as a 1962 Asian Games gold medallist. The citation for the Lifetime Achievement Arjuna Award was listed among the other award announcements in the release.

Three coaches were honoured with the Dronacharya Award for outstanding coaches in Sports and Games: Parveer Singh (Athletics), Chhote Lal Yadav (Boxing) and Neha Nandkumar Chavan (Shooting). The release named these recipients under the coaches’ category without further comment.

The Rashtriya Khel Protsahan Puruskar 2025 was conferred on the Army Paralympic Node, Pune. The Ministry described the prize as being given to corporate entity (Public/Private), non-governmental organisations (NGOs), “who have played a visible role in the area of sports promotion and development”.

The announcement also identified Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand specifically as women’s doubles partners in badminton within the list of awardees. Their pairing was referenced alongside individual listings for other Arjuna Award recipients.

The Ministry published the full list of awardees, coaches and entities in its official release on August 18, 2026, enumerating recipients across the various National Sports Awards categories.