Awards & Honours Current Affairs September 2026

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) selected Z T Lalrithangi, known as Pi Mari-i, a 35-year-old teacher-turned-farmer from Sangau village, Lawngtlai district, Mizoram, for the 'FAO 100 Women Heroes in Agrifood Systems and Rural Development'. Conferred under the International Year of Women Farmers 2026, it recognises her strawberry cultivation work and makes her the first Mizo to receive the honour. She was chosen from more than 600 nominations across 131 countries, with two Indian women among the 100. The recognition will be presented at the World Food Forum at FAO headquarters in Rome, Italy, from 12-16 October 2026.

The 16th Sansad Ratna Awards were presented in New Delhi, honouring top-performing Members of Parliament and Parliamentary Standing Committees on measurable indicators up to the Budget Session 2026. P P Chaudhary, Lok Sabha MP from Pali and Chairman of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on One Nation, One Election, received the award for a fourth time. The 2026 edition recognised 10 Lok Sabha MPs, 2 Rajya Sabha MPs and 4 Parliamentary Standing Committees, including the panels on Agriculture, Finance, Rural Development & Panchayati Raj, and Coal & Mines. Kishor Makwana, Chairman of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC), received the special Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Jan Seva Puraskar 2026.

The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation named Singapore's Tommy Koh, Bangladesh's Runa Khan and Myanmar's Bo Kyi winners of the 68th Ramon Magsaysay Awards (2026) on 31 August 2026, the 119th birth anniversary of Ramon Magsaysay, 7th President of the Philippines. Koh, a veteran diplomat and legal expert, was pivotal to the adoption of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in 1982. Khan founded the Bangladeshi NGO Friendship, which serves riverine *char* communities. Bo Kyi, a former political prisoner, co-founded the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners in 2000. Each receives a medallion, a citation certificate and USD 50,000 on 15 November 2026 in Manila.

The Marathi film 'Gondhal' was selected as India's official entry in the Best International Feature Film category for the Oscars 2027. Written and directed by Santosh Davakhar, it is a psychological and cultural thriller rooted in the Gondhal folk-ritual tradition of Maharashtra. Davakhar had won the Silver Peacock for Best Director at the 56th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) 2025, the same festival circuit that often shapes India's Oscar shortlist. 'Gondhal' becomes only the fourth Marathi film to be chosen as India's official entry, after 'Shwaas' (2005), 'Harishchandrachi Factory' (2010) and 'Court' (2016). The entry is selected by a jury constituted by the Film Federation of India.

The Film Federation of India announced on 18 September 2026 that the Marathi-language film Gondhal is India's official entry in the Best International Feature Film category at the 99th Academy Awards, chosen from 33 films in contention. Written and directed by Santosh Davakhar, the psychological and cultural thriller is set in rural Maharashtra and deals with ritual tradition, ambition and human vulnerability. The film had already won the Silver Peacock for Best Director at the 56th International Film Festival of India in 2025 and the FIPRESCI Award at the 17th Bengaluru International Film Festival in 2026. The Oscars ceremony is scheduled for 14 March 2027.

The Government of India announced in September 2026 that veteran actor Anant Nag will receive the Dadasaheb Phalke Award for 2024, on the recommendation of the award's selection committee. He becomes the 56th recipient and only the second Kannada cinema artist to be honoured, after Rajkumar in 1995. The award will be presented at the 72nd National Film Awards ceremony on 22 September 2026 at Kevadia (Ekta Nagar), Gujarat. Born Anant Nagarkatte, he has worked across mainstream and parallel cinema for over five decades, winning five Filmfare Awards and five Karnataka State Best Actor Awards, and received the Padma Bhushan in 2025.

The Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports announced four winners of the Tenzing Norgay National Adventure Awards (TNNAA) for 2024, India's highest national honour in adventure sports. Baljeet Kaur and Skalzang Rigzin won in Land Adventure, Rimo Saha in Water Adventure and Shiv Prasad Chamoli received the Lifetime Achievement award; the fourth category is Air Adventure. Each recipient gets a bronze statuette, a certificate, a blazer with a silken tie or a saree, and a cash prize of Rs 15 lakh. President Droupadi Murmu will present the awards at Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Delhi, alongside the National Sports Awards 2025.

Swiss great Roger Federer was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame at Newport, Rhode Island (USA) on 29 August 2026, entering in his first year of eligibility after retiring in 2022. Broadcaster and journalist Mary Carillo was honoured alongside him in the Contributor category. Federer won 20 Grand Slam singles titles and 103 ATP Tour titles, and spent a record 310 weeks as world number one, including a record eight Wimbledon crowns. He completed the Career Grand Slam by winning the 2009 French Open, and took Olympic doubles gold at Beijing 2008 and singles silver at London 2012.

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) announced the winners of the Green Highways Excellence Awards 2026, instituted in 2025 under the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways' Green Highways Policy, 2015 to reward best practices in highway landscaping and plantation management. NHAI received 86 nominations across three categories — 27 for Avenue Plantations, 36 for Median Plantations and 23 for Plantation in Land Parcels — of which 15 (five per category) were shortlisted for final evaluation. The Chilakaluripet Bypass on NH-16 near Vijayawada won Avenue Plantations; the Hyderabad–Yadgiri stretch on NH-163 won Median Plantations; and the Jamtha Clover Leaf on NH-44 at Nagpur topped Plantation in Land Parcels.